How to Ignore Namespaces in ElementTree\'s Element Location: A Simple Solution?

Ignoring Namespaces in ElementTree's Element Location

When using the findall method in ElementTree to locate elements in a namespace-aware XML document, it becomes necessary to specify the namespace for each tag. This can lead to inconveniences. This article presents a method to ignore namespaces in ElementTree search methods like find and findall.

Issue:

As demonstrated in the provided sample code, the tree.findall("DEAL_LEVEL/PAID_OFF") call returns None due to the ignored namespace in the XML file. Adding {http://www.test.com} to each tag is an inconvenient workaround.

Solution:

Instead of modifying the XML document, it's preferable to parse it and manipulate the tags in the result. This allows for handling multiple namespaces and namespace aliases.

The following Python code provides a solution:

<code class="python">from io import StringIO  # for Python 2 import from StringIO instead
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

# instead of ET.fromstring(xml)
it = ET.iterparse(StringIO(xml))
for _, el in it:
    _, _, el.tag = el.tag.rpartition('}') # strip ns
root = it.root</code>

Explanation:

The solution leverages the ET.iterparse function, which processes XML documents incrementally. During iteration, each element el has its tag modified by removing the namespace using rpartition('}'). This effectively strips the namespace from all tags.

Benefits:

This approach allows you to ignore namespace prefixes when searching for elements, simplifying the process and eliminating the need to manually specify namespaces.

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