Python ElementTree: Parsing a string and getting ElementTree instance

Question

I have a string containing XML data that is returned from an http request.

I am using ElementTree to parse the data, and I want to then search recursively for an element.

According to this question, I can only search recursively with result.findall() if result is of type ElementTree rather than type Element.

Now xml.etree.ElementTree.fromstring() , used to parse the string, returns an Element object, while xml.etree.ElementTree.parse(), used to parse a file, returns an ElementTree object.

My question is then: How can I parse the string and get an ElementTree instance? (without any madness like writing to a temporary file)

jcollado · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-20 18:41:03Z

32

When you use ElementTree.fromstring() what you're getting back is basically the root of the tree, so if you create a new tree like this ElementTree.ElementTree(root) you'll get you're looking for.

So, to make it clearer:

from xml.etree import ElementTree
tree = ElementTree.ElementTree(ElementTree.fromstring(<your_xml_string>))

or:

from xml.etree.ElementTree import fromstring, ElementTree
tree = ElementTree(fromstring(<your_xml_string>))

answered Dec 20, 2011 at 18:41

jcollado

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3 Comments

Steven Over a year ago

I just want to add - for those using lxml - that in lxml (where an element always belongs to a document/tree, even if implicit), you can use the getrootttree() method.

Samuel Lampa Over a year ago

Thanks! Really annoying API design in etree, to have different types of output just depending on the input source. Really confusing :(

Snorfalorpagus Over a year ago

This really isn't very clear in the documentation. "fromstring() parses XML from a string directly into an Element, which is the root element of the parsed tree. Other parsing functions may create an ElementTree."

ekhumoro · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-20 21:49:09Z

8

Turn your string into a file-like object and use ElementTree.parse:

from xml.etree import ElementTree
from cStringIO import StringIO

tree = ElementTree.parse(StringIO(string))

answered Dec 20, 2011 at 21:49

ekhumoro

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1 Comment

Rahul Over a year ago

Great, this is the one that I was looking for. :-)

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