Remove namespace from XML with comment - Python

Question

This question is a follow up to this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/51972010/3480297

I'm trying to remove the namespace from an XML file. The linked answer works fine when there are no comments in the XML. However, if there is a comment, an error is thrown.

This is an example of my code:

from lxml import etree

input_xml = '''
<package xmlns="http://apple.com/itunes/importer">
  <provider>some data <!-- example comment--> </provider>
  <language>en-GB</language>
</package>
'''
root = etree.fromstring(input_xml)

# Remove namespace prefixes
for elem in root.getiterator():
    elem.tag = etree.QName(elem).localname
# Remove unused namespace declarations
etree.cleanup_namespaces(root)

print(etree.tostring(root).decode())

This throws the following error:

ValueError: Invalid input tag of type class <'cython_function_or_method'>

EDIT:

If I have the following "input_xml" structure, not all the namespaces are taken out using the code in the below answer.

<package xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://com/scheme/location/example/ Location.xsd ">
  <provider>some data <!-- example comment--> </provider>
  <language>en-GB</language>
</package>

The result of the code is still:

<package xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://com/scheme/location/example/ Location.xsd ">
  <provider>some data <!-- example comment--> </provider>
  <language>en-GB</language>
</package>

"I'm trying to remove the namespace from an XML file." That's always suspicious and rarely a good idea (or necessary). Why are you trying to do that? — Tomalak
– Tomalak, Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 10:56
I'm trying to perform simple outputs (without extracting any information specifically from the XML at that point) and I would like to not have the namespaces. — Adam
– Adam, Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 11:01
Not sure if I get that...? Simple outputs without extracting information? — Tomalak
– Tomalak, Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 12:20
I meant that modifying the XML directly won't cause me any issues as I'm just displaying certain parts of it without parsing/extracting information from it. So modifying it won't be a problem. — Adam
– Adam, Commented Mar 2, 2020 at 13:31

mzjn · Accepted Answer · 2020-03-02 14:38:59Z

3

Make sure that the node is not a comment before changing the tag. The code below also removes any attributes that are in a namespace.

for elem in root.getiterator():
    # For elements, replace qualified name with localname
    if not(type(elem) == etree._Comment):
        elem.tag = etree.QName(elem).localname

    # Remove attributes that are in a namespace
    for attr in elem.attrib:
        if "{" in attr:
            elem.attrib.pop(attr)

edited Mar 2, 2020 at 14:38

answered Mar 2, 2020 at 10:50

mzjn

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3 Comments

Adam Over a year ago

Thank you! This works for the original code. But I have an issue when there are additional namespaces and they're not all being removed. Could you have a look at my edited question please?

mzjn Over a year ago

In the second example, you have an attribute bound to a namespace (xsi:schemaLocation). You need to remove this attribute if you don't want any namespace declarations in the document.

Adam Over a year ago

Is there a way to do that with the code rather than modifying the XML manually?

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