How can I view a text representation of an lxml element?

python xml lxml
Geo picture Geo · Oct 14, 2009 · Viewed 16.1k times · Source

If I'm parsing an XML document using lxml, is it possible to view a text representation of an element? I tried to do :

print repr(node)

but this outputs 

<Element obj at b743c0>

What can I use to see the node like it exists in the XML file? Is there some to_xml method or something?

Answer

Jeff Ober picture Jeff Ober · Oct 14, 2009

From http://lxml.de/tutorial.html#serialisation

>>> root = etree.XML('<root><a><b/></a></root>')

>>> etree.tostring(root)
b'<root><a><b/></a></root>'

>>> print(etree.tostring(root, xml_declaration=True))
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='ASCII'?>
<root><a><b/></a></root>

>>> print(etree.tostring(root, encoding='iso-8859-1'))
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1'?>
<root><a><b/></a></root>

>>> print(etree.tostring(root, pretty_print=True))
<root>
  <a>
    <b/>
  </a>
</root>

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