I\'m using python\'s lxml and I\'m trying to read an xml document, modify and write it back but the original doctype and xml declaration disappears. I\'m wondering if there\
You can also preserve DOCTYPE and the XML declaration with fromstring()
:
import sys
from StringIO import StringIO
from lxml import etree
xml = r'''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head>
<title>example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is an example</p>
</body>
</html>'''
tree = etree.fromstring(xml).getroottree() # or etree.parse(file)
tree.write(sys.stdout, xml_declaration=True, encoding=tree.docinfo.encoding)
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<title>example</title>
</head>
<body>
<p>This is an example</p>
</body>
</html>
Note the xml declaration (with correct encoding) and doctype are present. It even (possibly incorrectly) uses '
instead of "
in the xml declaration and adds Content-Type
to the <head>
.
For the @John Keyes' example input it produces the same results as etree.tostring()
in the answer.
tl;dr
# adds declaration with version and encoding regardless of
# which attributes were present in the original declaration
# expects utf-8 encoding (encode/decode calls)
# depending on your needs you might want to improve that
from lxml import etree
from xml.dom.minidom import parseString
xml1 = '''\
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "example.dtd">
<root>...</root>
'''
xml2 = '''\
<root>...</root>
'''
def has_xml_declaration(xml):
return parseString(xml).version
def process(xml):
t = etree.fromstring(xml.encode()).getroottree()
if has_xml_declaration(xml):
print(etree.tostring(t, xml_declaration=True, encoding=t.docinfo.encoding).decode())
else:
print(etree.tostring(t).decode())
process(xml1)
process(xml2)
The following will include the DOCTYPE and the XML declaration:
from lxml import etree
from StringIO import StringIO
tree = etree.parse(StringIO('''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "test" [ <!ENTITY tasty "eggs"> ]>
<root>
<a>&tasty;</a>
</root>
'''))
docinfo = tree.docinfo
print etree.tostring(tree, xml_declaration=True, encoding=docinfo.encoding)
Note, tostring
does not preserve the DOCTYPE
if you create an Element
(e.g. using fromstring
), it only works when you process the XML using parse
.
Update: as pointed out by J.F. Sebastian my assertion about fromstring
is not true.
Here is some code to highlight the differences between Element
and ElementTree
serialization:
from lxml import etree
from StringIO import StringIO
xml_str = '''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
<!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "test" [ <!ENTITY tasty "eggs"> ]>
<root>
<a>&tasty;</a>
</root>
'''
# get the ElementTree using parse
parse_tree = etree.parse(StringIO(xml_str))
encoding = parse_tree.docinfo.encoding
result = etree.tostring(parse_tree, xml_declaration=True, encoding=encoding)
print "%s\nparse ElementTree:\n%s\n" % ('-'*20, result)
# get the ElementTree using fromstring
fromstring_tree = etree.fromstring(xml_str).getroottree()
encoding = fromstring_tree.docinfo.encoding
result = etree.tostring(fromstring_tree, xml_declaration=True, encoding=encoding)
print "%s\nfromstring ElementTree:\n%s\n" % ('-'*20, result)
# DOCTYPE is lost, and no access to encoding
fromstring_element = etree.fromstring(xml_str)
result = etree.tostring(fromstring_element, xml_declaration=True)
print "%s\nfromstring Element:\n%s\n" % ('-'*20, result)
and the output is:
--------------------
parse ElementTree:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1'?>
<!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "test" [
<!ENTITY tasty "eggs">
]>
<root>
<a>eggs</a>
</root>
--------------------
fromstring ElementTree:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1'?>
<!DOCTYPE root SYSTEM "test" [
<!ENTITY tasty "eggs">
]>
<root>
<a>eggs</a>
</root>
--------------------
fromstring Element:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='ASCII'?>
<root>
<a>eggs</a>
</root>