Python XML Parsing without root
elementtree, parsing, python, python-2.7, xml
Solution
`lxml.html` can parse fragments:
from lxml import html
s = """<tag1>
<tag2>
</tag2>
</tag1>
<tag1>
<tag3/>
</tag1>"""
doc = html.fromstring(s)
for thing in doc:
print thing
for other in thing:
print other
"""
>>>
<Element tag1 at 0x3411a80>
<Element tag2 at 0x3428990>
<Element tag1 at 0x3428930>
<Element tag3 at 0x3411a80>
>>>
"""
Courtesy this SO answer
And if there is more than one level of nesting:
def flatten(nested):
"""recusively flatten nested elements
yields individual elements
"""
for thing in nested:
yield thing
for other in flatten(thing):
yield other
doc = html.fromstring(s)
for thing in flatten(doc):
print thing
Similarly, `lxml.etree.HTML` will parse this. It adds html and body tags:
d = etree.HTML(s)
for thing in d.iter():
print thing
"""
<Element html at 0x3233198>
<Element body at 0x322fcb0>
<Element tag1 at 0x3233260>
<Element tag2 at 0x32332b0>
<Element tag1 at 0x322fcb0>
<Element tag3 at 0x3233148>
"""
Problem
I wanted to parse a fairly huge xml-like file which doesn't have any root element. The format of the file is: ``` <tag1> <tag2> </tag2> </tag1> <tag1> <tag3/> </tag1> ``` What I tried: - tried using ElementTree but it returned a "no root" error. (Is there any other python library which can be used for parsing this file?) - tried adding an extra tag to wrap the entire file and then parse it using Element-Tree. However, I would like to use some more efficient method, in which I would not need to alter the original xml file.