leptris (Python) — lxml-shaped bindings for libleptris

leptris wraps the libleptris C API (XML 1.0 parsing, XPath 1.0) using cffi in ABI mode, with a required C accelerator for Element allocation and the hot accessors (tag, text, attrib, get, indexing, sibling navigation and plain-path XPath evaluation). Wheels ship it compiled; sdist builds require a C compiler.

The pinned libleptris version lives in libleptris-version.txt (lockstep releases); CI builds it from the release tarball. The binding loads the shared library from LEPTRIS_LIB_PATH or the loader path.

Requirements

  • Python 3.9+
  • cffi (installed automatically)
  • libleptris 1.9.3+ as a shared library (1.9.1 has an options-struct ABI break — leptris/leptris#568)
  • libleptris as a shared library (libleptris.dylib / .so / .dll) on the loader path, or pointed to by LEPTRIS_LIB_PATH (which must name the library file — the loader dlopens it verbatim). For a development checkout:
cmake -B build -S /path/to/leptris -DLEPTRIS_BUILD_SHARED=ON
cmake --build build --target leptris_shared
export LEPTRIS_LIB_PATH=/path/to/leptris/build/src/libleptris.dylib

Quick start

from leptris import fromstring, tostring

root = fromstring("<library><book id='1' lang='en'>Ulysses</book></library>")

root.tag                                # "library"
root[0].get("id")                       # "1"
root[0].attrib                          # {"id": "1", "lang": "en"}
root[0].text                            # "Ulysses"

root.xpath("count(//book)")             # 1.0
[b.text for b in root.findall("book")]  # ["Ulysses"]

tostring(root[0], encoding="unicode")   # "<book id=\"1\" lang=\"en\">Ulysses</book>"

Documents own the tree; use the context manager or close():

from leptris import parse

with parse("catalog.xml") as doc:
    doc.xpath("//book[@lang='en']")

Namespaces, variables, canonical XML and streaming:

root.xpath("//x:item", namespaces={"x": "urn:ex"})
root.xpath("//book[@id=$id]", variables={"id": "2"})
c14n(root, exclusive=True)

from leptris import sax
sax.parse(xml, handler)                       # one-shot
with sax.StreamingParser(handler) as parser:  # push, constant memory
    parser.feed(chunk, final=last)

Migrating from lxml

lxml leptris Notes
etree.fromstring / etree.XML fromstring / XML
etree.parse parse paths and file-likes; no URLs
etree.tostring(elem, …) tostring(elem, …) bytes by default, encoding="unicode" for str
elem.tag / .text / .tail same tag uses {uri}local Clark notation; CDATA merges into text (lxml's default parser behavior)
elem.attrib / .get() / .keys() / .items() same attrib is a read-only Mapping
elem.getparent/getnext/getprevious same
elem[i], len(elem), iteration, slices same indexing is child indexing, never attribute lookup
elem.iter() / .iterdescendants() / .itertext() same elements only (ElementTree semantics); lxml's iter() also yields comments/PIs
elem.find/findall/findtext same accepts full XPath 1.0 — a superset of ElementPath — including {uri}local names
elem.xpath(expr, namespaces=…) same plus variables={…} (leptris extension)
etree.c14n / etree.XInclude c14n(…) / doc.process_xinclude()
etree.XMLSyntaxError ParseError XPath failures raise XPathError; both subclass LeptrisError
etree.Element, SubElement, append, set, remove not exposed libleptris has partial mutation upstream (node content setters, set_root, remove_children) — not surfaced here; build trees elsewhere
document-level comments / PIs doc.toplevel_comments() / doc.toplevel_pis() prolog then epilog; requires libleptris 1.9.3+
etree.iterparse leptris.iterparse(source, full_document=False) bounded by the largest subtree; yields ("end", element); elements borrowed until the next yield; names are QNames as written. Truncated or malformed input raises ParseError (libleptris 1.9.4 error channel). full_document=True yields every element in completion order — error detection is unreliable in that mode pending leptris/leptris#592. Still ~2× slower than lxml's iterparse (leptris/leptris#563)
smart strings plain str XPath string/attribute results
elem.nsmap absent use elem.namespace / elem.prefix and xpath(namespaces=…)
etree.XPath compiled objects leptris.XPath(expression) compile once, evaluate many; contexts and namespaces supported
parser options (resolve_entities, …) absent libleptris 1.2.0 has no per-parse options
elem.sourceline same requires libleptris 1.3.0+
undeclared XPath prefix raises in lxml evaluates to an empty nodeset here

Layout

  • leptris/_ffi.py — cdef mirror of the public headers + loader (the only place libleptris is declared)
  • leptris/_leptrisaccel.c — the C accelerator (abi3): allocates Elements and runs the hot accessors, subtree iteration, the parse and serialization seams, and the per-document element registry; bound to libleptris by the positional protocol in element.py
  • leptris/element.py, document.py, node.py, xpath.py — the Python surface: queries, walks, documents; node.py exposes the full DOM (comments, CDATA, PIs) beneath the ElementTree shape
  • leptris/api.py — fromstring/parse/tostring/c14n/ iterparse
  • leptris/sax.py — SAX one-shot and streaming
  • tests/ — pytest suite (pytest with LEPTRIS_LIB_PATH set)
  • benchmarks/ — matrix vs lxml/ElementTree/minidom (pip install .[bench], then python -m benchmarks.matrix)

Memory model

The Document owns the whole tree and its pool. Accessor strings are copied into Python str at the boundary, so nothing depends on document lifetime after a call returns. Elements keep a reference to their Document, so the pool cannot be freed while any wrapper is alive. Prefer explicit close() / the context manager; __del__ is a refcounting safety net, not a contract. Using an element after its document is closed raises LeptrisError.

Versioning

libleptris-version.txt pins the library release the binding is built and tested against. From 1.3.0 the package follows its own semver: 1.2.0 shipped an interim bespoke API to no adopters, and 1.3.0 replaces it with the lxml-shaped API (breaking, but pre-adoption). pyproject.toml and leptris/__init__.py must agree at release time.

Publishing

Releases publish to PyPI via .github/workflows/release.yml, using PyPI trusted publishing (no stored credentials). The workflow runs on manual dispatch (ships the version in pyproject.toml) and is called by the libleptris release flow (publish: true), so every libleptris release ships the wheel.

Local development

python3 -m venv .venv
./.venv/bin/pip install --upgrade build pytest cffi
./.venv/bin/pip install -e .[test,bench]
LEPTRIS_LIB_PATH=/path/to/libleptris.dylib ./.venv/bin/python -m pytest tests/ -q

Project links

Data verified by PyPI on Aug 27, 2026
Data provided by the project maintainers, verified at the time the release was uploaded to PyPI.

Key dates

PyPI data
Data sourced directly from PyPI's database.
  • Released:
Newer release available (1.27.1)

1 maintainer

PyPI data
Data sourced directly from PyPI's database.
Avatar for leptris from gravatar.com leptris

Credits

Author: Ribose

GitHub Statistics

Data verified by PyPI on Aug 27, 2026
The GitHub source repository was provided by the project maintainers and verified by PyPI at the time of upload. Stars, forks, and open issues/PRs are derived from that repository and have not been independently verified.

License expression

MIT
View SPDX License List

Requires

Python >=3.9

Provides Extra

test bench

Tags

xml xpath parser lxml ffi cffi

Classifiers

Report project as malware

Download files

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

Source Distribution

leptris-1.16.0.tar.gz (45.2 kB view details)

Uploaded Source

Built Distributions

If you're not sure about the file name format, learn more about wheel file names.

leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-win_amd64.whl (41.2 kB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.9+Windows x86-64

leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.manylinux2014_aarch64.whl (92.8 kB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.9+manylinux: glibc 2.17+ ARM64

leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-manylinux_2_5_x86_64.manylinux1_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl (88.9 kB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.9+manylinux: glibc 2.17+ x86-64manylinux: glibc 2.5+ x86-64

leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (39.5 kB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.9+macOS 11.0+ ARM64

leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-macosx_10_9_x86_64.whl (39.0 kB view details)

Uploaded CPython 3.9+macOS 10.9+ x86-64

File details

Details for the file leptris-1.16.0.tar.gz.

File metadata

  • Download URL: leptris-1.16.0.tar.gz
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 45.2 kB
  • Tags: Source
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? Yes
  • Uploaded via: twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14

File hashes

Hashes for leptris-1.16.0.tar.gz
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 2c5a76e553dc0a12dfa80c35c5504925e06a59043815f9f7744d35704b9d43a8
MD5 183413ed690d01eb0caa0add97c6f8c1
BLAKE2b-256 ab31b236c0748fad5e756527f1a273d874a2021821f65b10e99bdfd81bc54ebd

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for leptris-1.16.0.tar.gz:

Publisher: release.yml on leptris/leptris-py

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-win_amd64.whl.

File metadata

  • Download URL: leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-win_amd64.whl
  • Upload date:
  • Size: 41.2 kB
  • Tags: CPython 3.9+, Windows x86-64
  • Uploaded using Trusted Publishing? Yes
  • Uploaded via: twine/7.0.0 CPython/3.13.14

File hashes

Hashes for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-win_amd64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 0d988c702269988507d0b083f66a70ff49cb682185be7e79c79e4470b3c565b3
MD5 3ed86fd45c5cc4af59b763e5c6d5047b
BLAKE2b-256 63598205ff48ef0fad11d5e79d81cece67b28da526ead5c578b3603ca5c271b5

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-win_amd64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on leptris/leptris-py

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.manylinux2014_aarch64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.manylinux2014_aarch64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 68c515284e8af26a0788c927b133d6397a0ec80be6e4f134543735a884598e3b
MD5 87ce8b3fbc9b9e32c6dd347a0ae7e499
BLAKE2b-256 b0cb60f8c2ee13e712b7967b48d84d830e277d999f31b5a8c85b825503795c03

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-manylinux_2_17_aarch64.manylinux2014_aarch64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on leptris/leptris-py

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-manylinux_2_5_x86_64.manylinux1_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-manylinux_2_5_x86_64.manylinux1_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 d2c81428b8de6b6b5dada7c537378bff2851bd15e0d8d0f69402bf99909f1d89
MD5 6b8dfa3ee6074c6c3ba5fd4a82d68b3b
BLAKE2b-256 060f5cb2dd3919cab935ac71fe4657c7942ad114479a519f649eaa66c0d4888f

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-manylinux_2_5_x86_64.manylinux1_x86_64.manylinux_2_17_x86_64.manylinux2014_x86_64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on leptris/leptris-py

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 35fbc19d7e609b4a9294097840581c07739112703e9a3fb020c1e1fb98165b53
MD5 dd29f17261969ba4f6812b87d3d0e02d
BLAKE2b-256 43ba70d5d400a75430151e943b6197cea0ac33ae3d72aa469e6a788613aaf11c

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on leptris/leptris-py

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

File details

Details for the file leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-macosx_10_9_x86_64.whl.

File metadata

File hashes

Hashes for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-macosx_10_9_x86_64.whl
Algorithm Hash digest
SHA256 ef108630e36e7ad3c6665430c33cf62e292cd55ead7d01d4643af12fe6fc550e
MD5 28ad10ef3926962ae42bfb04ee5de965
BLAKE2b-256 0360fcfd6381ad5cffa1c88231cedb78e7f6d3ccd0c58216c69c6c447d090e8d

See more details on using hashes here.

Provenance

The following attestation bundles were made for leptris-1.16.0-cp39-abi3-macosx_10_9_x86_64.whl:

Publisher: release.yml on leptris/leptris-py

Attestations: Values shown here reflect the state when the release was signed and may no longer be current.

Release history Release notifications | RSS feed

1.27.1

6 files

1.27.0

6 files

1.26.1

6 files

1.26.0

6 files

1.25.4

6 files

1.25.3

6 files

1.25.2

6 files

1.25.1

6 files

1.25.0

6 files

1.24.3

6 files

1.24.2

6 files

1.24.1

6 files

1.24.0

6 files

1.23.3

6 files

1.23.2

6 files

1.23.1

6 files

1.23.0

6 files

1.22.2

6 files

1.22.1

6 files

1.22.0

6 files

1.21.0

6 files

1.20.0

6 files

1.19.0

6 files

1.18.0

6 files

1.17.1

6 files

1.17.0

6 files

1.16.1

6 files

This release

1.16.0 This release

6 files

1.15.1

6 files

1.15.0

6 files

1.14.3

6 files

1.14.2

6 files

1.14.1

6 files

1.14.0

6 files

1.13.3

6 files

1.13.2

6 files

1.13.1

6 files

1.13.0

6 files

1.12.0

6 files

1.11.1

6 files

1.11.0

6 files

1.10.0

6 files

1.9.93.2

6 files

1.9.93.0

6 files

1.9.90.0

6 files

1.9.87.0

6 files

1.9.86.0

6 files

1.9.84.0

6 files

1.9.83.0

6 files

1.9.80.0

6 files

1.9.79.0

6 files

1.9.76.0

6 files

1.9.0

6 files

1.8.0

6 files

1.7.0

6 files

1.6.1

6 files

1.6.0

5 files

1.5.0

2 files

1.4.1

2 files

1.4.0

2 files

1.3.1

2 files

1.3.0

2 files

1.2.0

2 files

Anthropic, PBC Visionary sponsor Bloomberg Visionary sponsor Hudson River Trading Visionary sponsor Meta Visionary sponsor NVIDIA Visionary sponsor Microsoft Sustainability sponsor Depot Continuous Integration AWS Cloud computing and Security Sponsor Datadog Monitoring Fastly CDN Google Download Analytics Sentry Error logging StatusPage Status page