XML in Python and lxml

Question

I am using the pinnacle (betting) api which returns an XML file. At the moment, I save it to a .xml file as below:

req = urllib2.Request(url, headers=headers)
responseData = urllib2.urlopen(req).read()

ofn = 'pinnacle_feed_basketball.xml'
with open(ofn, 'w') as ofile:
    ofile.write(responseData)
parse_xml()

and then open it in the parse_xml function

tree = etree.parse("pinnacle_feed_basketball.xml")
fdtime = tree.xpath('//rsp/fd/fdTime/text()')

I am presuming saving it as an XML file and then reading in the file is not necessary but I cannot get it to work without doing this.

I tried passing in responseData to the parsexml() function

parse_xml(responseData)

and then in the function

tree = etree.parse(responseData)
fdtime = tree.xpath('//rsp/fd/fdTime/text()')

But it doesn't work.

If you want to parse an in-memory object (in your case, a string), use etree.fromstring(<obj>) -- etree.parse expects a file-like object -- Docs — jedwards
– jedwards, Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 22:41

jedwards · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-16 22:48:37Z

1

If you want to parse an in-memory object (in your case, a string), use etree.fromstring(<obj>) -- etree.parse expects a file-like object or filename -- Docs

For example:

import urllib2, lxml.etree as etree

url = 'http://www.xmlfiles.com/examples/note.xml'
headers = {}

req = urllib2.Request(url, headers=headers)
responseData = urllib2.urlopen(req).read()

element = etree.fromstring(responseData)
print(element)
print(etree.tostring(element, pretty_print=True))

Output:

<Element note at 0x2c29dc8>
<note>
  <to>Tove</to>
  <from>Jani</from>
  <heading>Reminder</heading>
  <body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>

answered Mar 16, 2015 at 22:48

jedwards

30.3k3 gold badges69 silver badges94 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

alecxe · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-16 22:47:58Z

1

parse() is designed to read from file-like objects.

But you are passing a string in both cases - pinnacle_feed_basketball.xml string and responseData, which is also a string.

In the first case it should be:

with open("pinnacle_feed_basketball.xml") as f:
    tree = etree.parse(f)

In the second case:

root = etree.fromstring(responseData)  # note that you are not getting an "ElementTree" object here

FYI, urllib2.urlopen(req) is also a file-like object:

tree = etree.parse(urllib2.urlopen(req))

answered Mar 16, 2015 at 22:47

alecxe

476k127 gold badges1.1k silver badges1.2k bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

XML in Python and lxml

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

Comments

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related