lxml etree xmlparser remove unwanted namespace

Question

I have an xml doc that I am trying to parse using Etree.lxml

<Envelope xmlns="http://www.example.com/zzz/yyy">
  <Header>
    <Version>1</Version>
  </Header>
  <Body>
    some stuff
  <Body>
<Envelope>

My code is:

path = "path to xml file"
from lxml import etree as ET
parser = ET.XMLParser(ns_clean=True)
dom = ET.parse(path, parser)
dom.getroot()

When I try to get dom.getroot() I get:

<Element {http://www.example.com/zzz/yyy}Envelope at 28adacac>

However I only want:

<Element Envelope at 28adacac>

When i do

dom.getroot().find("Body")

I get nothing returned. However, when I

dom.getroot().find("{http://www.example.com/zzz/yyy}Body")

I get a result.

I thought passing ns_clean=True to the parser would prevent this.

Any ideas?

see also: [Python ElementTree module: How to ignore the namespace of XML files](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/13412496/python-elementtree-module-how-to-ignore-the-namespace-of-xml-files-to-locate-ma/76601149#76601149) — milahu, Jul 03 '23 at 06:49

score 59 · Accepted Answer · edited Sep 03 '16 at 15:18

import io
import lxml.etree as ET

content='''\
<Envelope xmlns="http://www.example.com/zzz/yyy">
  <Header>
    <Version>1</Version>
  </Header>
  <Body>
    some stuff
  </Body>
</Envelope>
'''    
dom = ET.parse(io.BytesIO(content))

You can find namespace-aware nodes using the xpath method:

body=dom.xpath('//ns:Body',namespaces={'ns':'http://www.example.com/zzz/yyy'})
print(body)
# [<Element {http://www.example.com/zzz/yyy}Body at 90b2d4c>]

If you really want to remove namespaces, you could use an XSL transformation:

# http://wiki.tei-c.org/index.php/Remove-Namespaces.xsl
xslt='''<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="no"/>

<xsl:template match="/|comment()|processing-instruction()">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </xsl:copy>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="*">
    <xsl:element name="{local-name()}">
      <xsl:apply-templates select="@*|node()"/>
    </xsl:element>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="@*">
    <xsl:attribute name="{local-name()}">
      <xsl:value-of select="."/>
    </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
'''

xslt_doc=ET.parse(io.BytesIO(xslt))
transform=ET.XSLT(xslt_doc)
dom=transform(dom)

Here we see the namespace has been removed:

print(ET.tostring(dom))
# <Envelope>
#   <Header>
#     <Version>1</Version>
#   </Header>
#   <Body>
#     some stuff
#   </Body>
# </Envelope>

So you can now find the Body node this way:

print(dom.find("Body"))
# <Element Body at 8506cd4>

XSLT to remove all namespaces. Just what I was looking for, genius. — Neil Albrock, Jan 09 '12 at 21:52
FYI if using Python3 you will need to encode the xslt string first. ie xslt_doc=ET.parse(io.BytesIO(str.encode(xslt))) — AZhao, Sep 03 '16 at 21:15

score 34 · Answer 2 · edited Feb 05 '13 at 11:45

34

Try using Xpath:

dom.xpath("//*[local-name() = 'Body']")

Taken (and simplified) from this page, under "The xpath() method" section

edited Feb 05 '13 at 11:45

Denis Malinovsky

5,840
1
22
17

answered Nov 23 '10 at 12:29

dusan

9,104
3
35
55

score 5 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 01 '11 at 09:40

5

The last solution from https://bitbucket.org/olauzanne/pyquery/issue/17 can help you to avoid namespaces with little effort

apply xml.replace(' xmlns:', ' xmlnamespace:') to your xml before using pyquery so lxml will ignore namespaces

In your case, try xml.replace(' xmlns="', ' xmlnamespace="'). However, you might need something more complex if the string is expected in the bodies as well.

answered Jul 01 '11 at 09:40

Andrei

10,918
12
76
110

3

This is amazing. You have changed my life, thank you. (ps, whoever designed XML namespaces, wtf?) – Walt W Jun 25 '12 at 22:57
18

String munging is always the path to madness. In the general case, this answer is dead wrong. Suppose you're formatting an rss feed of this exact question -- the result would tell people to `xml.replace(' xmlnamespace="', ' xmlnamespace="')`... – bukzor Sep 16 '13 at 21:49
A simple but very crucial improvement would be `xml.replace(' xmlns="', ' xmlnamespace="', 1)`, in which way only the first appearance would be replaced, thus the `xmlns` in other places like the main content would not be affected. – ospider Nov 11 '22 at 16:10

Tom · Answer 4 · 2022-01-27T12:18:10.363

1

Another not-too-bad option is to use the QName helper and wrap it in a function with a default namespace:

from lxml import etree

DEFAULT_NS = 'http://www.example.com/zzz/yyy'

def tag(name, ns=DEFAULT_NS):
    return etree.QName(ns, name)

dom = etree.parse(path)
body = dom.getroot().find(tag('Body'))

edited Jan 27 '22 at 12:18

answered Jan 24 '22 at 11:43

Tom

7,269
1
42
69

`QName(ns, **name**)` - misprint – Sergey Kolesnik Jan 26 '22 at 22:14
1

@SergeyKolesnik good catch - I've fixed the answer. – Tom Jan 27 '22 at 12:19

score -4 · Answer 5 · answered Nov 23 '10 at 11:00

-4

You're showing the result of the repr() call. When you programmatically move through the tree, you can simply choose to ignore the namespace.

answered Nov 23 '10 at 11:00

robert

33,242
8
53
74

lxml etree xmlparser remove unwanted namespace

5 Answers5

Linked

Related