Skip to main content

Makes working with XML feel like you are working with JSON

Project description

# xmltodict

`xmltodict` is a Python module that makes working with XML feel like you are working with [JSON](http://docs.python.org/library/json.html), as in this ["spec"](http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2006/05/31/converting-between-xml-and-json.html):

[![Build Status](https://secure.travis-ci.org/martinblech/xmltodict.png)](http://travis-ci.org/martinblech/xmltodict)

```python
>>> print(json.dumps(xmltodict.parse("""
... <mydocument has="an attribute">
... <and>
... <many>elements</many>
... <many>more elements</many>
... </and>
... <plus a="complex">
... element as well
... </plus>
... </mydocument>
... """), indent=4))
{
"mydocument": {
"@has": "an attribute",
"and": {
"many": [
"elements",
"more elements"
]
},
"plus": {
"@a": "complex",
"#text": "element as well"
}
}
}
```

## Namespace support

By default, `xmltodict` does no XML namespace processing (it just treats namespace declarations as regular node attributes), but passing `process_namespaces=True` will make it expand namespaces for you:

```python
>>> xml = """
... <root xmlns="http://defaultns.com/"
... xmlns:a="http://a.com/"
... xmlns:b="http://b.com/">
... <x>1</x>
... <a:y>2</a:y>
... <b:z>3</b:z>
... </root>
... """
>>> xmltodict.parse(xml, process_namespaces=True) == {
... 'http://defaultns.com/:root': {
... 'http://defaultns.com/:x': '1',
... 'http://a.com/:y': '2',
... 'http://b.com/:z': '3',
... }
... }
True
```

It also lets you collapse certain namespaces to shorthand prefixes, or skip them altogether:

```python
>>> namespaces = {
... 'http://defaultns.com/': None, # skip this namespace
... 'http://a.com/': 'ns_a', # collapse "http://a.com/" -> "ns_a"
... }
>>> xmltodict.parse(xml, process_namespaces=True, namespaces=namespaces) == {
... 'root': {
... 'x': '1',
... 'ns_a:y': '2',
... 'http://b.com/:z': '3',
... },
... }
True
```

## Streaming mode

`xmltodict` is very fast ([Expat](http://docs.python.org/library/pyexpat.html)-based) and has a streaming mode with a small memory footprint, suitable for big XML dumps like [Discogs](http://discogs.com/data/) or [Wikipedia](http://dumps.wikimedia.org/):

```python
>>> def handle_artist(_, artist):
... print artist['name']
... return True
>>>
>>> xmltodict.parse(GzipFile('discogs_artists.xml.gz'),
... item_depth=2, item_callback=handle_artist)
A Perfect Circle
Fantômas
King Crimson
Chris Potter
...
```

It can also be used from the command line to pipe objects to a script like this:

```python
import sys, marshal
while True:
_, article = marshal.load(sys.stdin)
print article['title']
```

```sh
$ cat enwiki-pages-articles.xml.bz2 | bunzip2 | xmltodict.py 2 | myscript.py
AccessibleComputing
Anarchism
AfghanistanHistory
AfghanistanGeography
AfghanistanPeople
AfghanistanCommunications
Autism
...
```

Or just cache the dicts so you don't have to parse that big XML file again. You do this only once:

```sh
$ cat enwiki-pages-articles.xml.bz2 | bunzip2 | xmltodict.py 2 | gzip > enwiki.dicts.gz
```

And you reuse the dicts with every script that needs them:

```sh
$ cat enwiki.dicts.gz | gunzip | script1.py
$ cat enwiki.dicts.gz | gunzip | script2.py
...
```

## Roundtripping

You can also convert in the other direction, using the `unparse()` method:

```python
>>> mydict = {
... 'response': {
... 'status': 'good',
... 'last_updated': '2014-02-16T23:10:12Z',
... }
... }
>>> print unparse(mydict, pretty=True)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<response>
<status>good</status>
<last_updated>2014-02-16T23:10:12Z</last_updated>
</response>
```

## Ok, how do I get it?

You just need to

```sh
$ pip install xmltodict
```

There is an [official Fedora package for xmltodict](https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgdb/acls/name/python-xmltodict). If you are on Fedora or RHEL, you can do:

```sh
$ sudo yum install python-xmltodict
```

There is also an [official Arch Linux package for xmltodict](https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/python-xmltodict/). You can use pacman to install if you are using Arch:

```sh
$ sudo pacman -S python-xmltodict
```

Project details


Download files

Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.

Source Distribution

xmltodict-0.10.1.tar.gz (24.6 kB view hashes)

Uploaded Source

Supported by

AWS AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Datadog Monitoring Fastly Fastly CDN Google Google Download Analytics Microsoft Microsoft PSF Sponsor Pingdom Pingdom Monitoring Sentry Sentry Error logging StatusPage StatusPage Status page