lxmlasdict 0.1.0

"lxmlasdict" allows you to treat lxml tree elements as if you were working with a dict

lxmlasdict

lxmlasdict is just wrapper that allows you to treat lxml tree elements as if you were working with a dict. elements are searched only when accessing keys

pip install lxmlasdict

There are a few things to remember when working with this wrapper:

• the wrapper returns None only when accessing the keys "#text" and "@attr" if they do not exist, because they are final elements that have no children.
• the wrapper does not return None when accessing other keys that do not exist; instead, it returns an empty wrapper that can be checked for the None value or its length

Examples

>>> data = lxmlasdict.from_string("""
...     <root a="testa">
...         <child>
...             <item>text 1</item>
...             <item>text 2</item>
...         </child>
...         <example b="testb">
...             example text
...         </example>
...         <test-ns:example xmlns:test-ns="http://test-ns.com/">
...             example text (namespaced)
...         </test-ns:example>
...     </root>
... """)

Accessing to only one element

>>> print(data['child']['item']['#text'])
elements

Accessing to multiple elements

>>> for item in data['child']['item']:
...     print(item['#text'])
... 
elements
more elements

Checking for element presence

>>> if data['child']['item']:
...     print('element exists')
... else:
...     print('element does not exist')
... 
element exists

>>> if data['child']['test']:
...     print('element exists')
... else:
...     print('element does not exist')
... 
element does not exist

Counting the number of elements

>>> print(len(data['child']['item']))
2

Accessing attributes

>>> print(data['@a'])
testa

>>> print(data['example']['@b'])
testb

Accessing to elements with namespace

>>> print(data['test-ns:example']['#text'])
example text (namespaced)

Convert element and its contents to dict

>>> data = lxmlasdict.to_dict(data)
>>> print(json.dumps(data, indent=4))
{
    "root": {
        "child": {
            "item": [
                "text 1",
                "text 2"
            ]
        },
        "example": {
            "@b": "testb",
            "#text": "example text"
        },
        "test-ns:example": "example text (namespaced)",
        "@a": "testa"
    }
}