Parsing XML with namespace in Python via 'ElementTree'

Question

I have the following XML which I want to parse using Python\'s ElementTree:

Answer 1

My solution is based on @Martijn Pieters' comment:

register_namespace only influences serialisation, not search.

So the trick here is to use different dictionaries for serialization and for searching.

namespaces = {
    '': 'http://www.example.com/default-schema',
    'spec': 'http://www.example.com/specialized-schema',
}

Now, register all namespaces for parsing and writing:

for name, value in namespaces.iteritems():
    ET.register_namespace(name, value)

For searching (find(), findall(), iterfind()) we need a non-empty prefix. Pass these functions a modified dictionary (here I modify the original dictionary, but this must be made only after the namespaces are registered).

self.namespaces['default'] = self.namespaces['']

Now, the functions from the find() family can be used with the default prefix:

print root.find('default:myelem', namespaces)

but

tree.write(destination)

does not use any prefixes for elements in the default namespace.