libsolace.xml2dict module

Makes working with XML feel like you are working with JSON

exception libsolace.xml2dict.ParsingInterrupted

Bases: exceptions.Exception

libsolace.xml2dict.parse(xml_input, *args, **kwargs)

Parse the given XML input and convert it into a dictionary.

xml_input can either be a string or a file-like object.

If xml_attribs is True, element attributes are put in the dictionary among regular child elements, using @ as a prefix to avoid collisions. If set to False, they are just ignored.

Simple example:

>>> doc = xmltodict.parse("""
... <a prop="x">
...   <b>1</b>
...   <b>2</b>
... </a>
... """)
>>> doc['a']['@prop']
u'x'
>>> doc['a']['b']
[u'1', u'2']

If item_depth is 0, the function returns a dictionary for the root element (default behavior). Otherwise, it calls item_callback every time an item at the specified depth is found and returns None in the end (streaming mode).

The callback function receives two parameters: the path from the document root to the item (name-attribs pairs), and the item (dict). If the callback’s return value is false-ish, parsing will be stopped with the ParsingInterrupted exception.

Streaming example:

>>> def handle(path, item):
...     print 'path:%s item:%s' % (path, item)
...     return True
...
>>> xmltodict.parse("""
... <a prop="x">
...   <b>1</b>
...   <b>2</b>
... </a>""", item_depth=2, item_callback=handle)
path:[(u'a', {u'prop': u'x'}), (u'b', None)] item:1
path:[(u'a', {u'prop': u'x'}), (u'b', None)] item:2

The optional argument postprocessor is a function that takes path, key and value as positional arguments and returns a new (key, value) pair where both key and value may have changed. Usage example:

>>> def postprocessor(path, key, value):
...     try:
...         return key + ':int', int(value)
...     except (ValueError, TypeError):
...         return key, value
>>> xmltodict.parse('<a><b>1</b><b>2</b><b>x</b></a>',
...                 postprocessor=postprocessor)
OrderedDict([(u'a', OrderedDict([(u'b:int', [1, 2]), (u'b', u'x')]))])

libsolace.xml2dict.unparse(item, output=None, encoding='utf-8', **kwargs)