xml.etree.ElementTree for chinese

Question

Given an XML with chinese characters, I would like to use xml.etree to help me parse the XML to do some processing. The English version works. For example:

>el.xml printf '%s\n' $'<?xml version=\'1.0\' encoding=\'utf8\'?><Color>Grey</Color>'
>cl.xml printf '%s\n' $'<?xml version=\'1.0\' encoding=\'utf8\'?><Color>灰色</Color>'

tryParse() {
  python -c 'import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET; import sys; ET.parse(sys.argv[1])' "$@"
}

tryParse el.xml && printf '%s\n\n' "English works"
tryParse cl.xml && printf '%s\n\n' "Chinese works"

...emits as output:

English works

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 1182, in parse
    tree.parse(source, parser)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 656, in parse
    parser.feed(data)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 1642, in feed
    self._raiseerror(v)
  File "/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 1506, in _raiseerror
    raise err
xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 1, column 44

You need `ET.fromstring()`, not `ET.parse()`; this code is looking for a **file** with `` in its name. — Charles Duffy, Aug 16 '17 at 16:02
...which is to say -- the code given here, *if* we fix the broken variable names, is then a duplicate of https://stackoverflow.com/questions/21713527/xml-parsing-from-web-response or https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3064247/cant-parse-xml-effectively-using-python, which share the same underlying cause. — Charles Duffy, Aug 16 '17 at 16:03
...with Python 2.7.10, I **don't** get a ParseError after copying-and-pasting this code as-edited into a brand new interpreter window. — Charles Duffy, Aug 16 '17 at 16:06
Also see http://ideone.com/pZBo5b, where your code runs without throwing any exceptions in an online interpreter. — Charles Duffy, Aug 16 '17 at 16:07
@CharlesDuffy I have made the necessary changes to the code. — bryan.blackbee, Aug 16 '17 at 16:11
[Edit] your Question and show the Header e.g. `` from your `XML`File? — stovfl, Aug 16 '17 at 16:14
I've edited in a proper [mcve] -- code that someone else can copy-and-paste to see the problem that contains nothing extraneous to same. — Charles Duffy, Aug 16 '17 at 16:19

Charles Duffy · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-16T16:54:46.033

1

Use lxml instead:

>>> import lxml.etree as ET
>>> doc = ET.parse('cl.xml')
>>> print doc.getroot().text
灰色

edited Aug 16 '17 at 16:54

answered Aug 16 '17 at 16:23

Charles Duffy

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hi, when i check the contents in the node, is it also chinese characters? – bryan.blackbee Aug 16 '17 at 16:51

xml.etree.ElementTree for chinese

1 Answers1