======================== XPath and XSLT with lxml ======================== lxml supports XPath 1.0, XSLT 1.0 and the EXSLT extensions through libxml2 and libxslt in a standards compliant way. .. contents:: .. 1 XPath 1.1 The ``xpath()`` method 1.2 Namespaces and prefixes 1.3 XPath return values 1.4 Generating XPath expressions 1.5 The ``XPath`` class 1.6 The ``XPathEvaluator`` classes 1.7 ``ETXPath`` 1.8 Error handling 2 XSLT 2.1 XSLT result objects 2.2 Stylesheet parameters 2.3 The ``xslt()`` tree method 2.4 Dealing with stylesheet complexity 2.5 Profiling The usual setup procedure: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> from lxml import etree .. >>> try: from StringIO import StringIO ... except ImportError: ... from io import BytesIO ... def StringIO(s): ... if isinstance(s, str): s = s.encode("UTF-8") ... return BytesIO(s) >>> try: unicode = __builtins__["unicode"] ... except (NameError, KeyError): unicode = str XPath ===== lxml.etree supports the simple path syntax of the `find, findall and findtext`_ methods on ElementTree and Element, as known from the original ElementTree library (ElementPath_). As an lxml specific extension, these classes also provide an ``xpath()`` method that supports expressions in the complete XPath syntax, as well as `custom extension functions`_. .. _ElementPath: http://effbot.org/zone/element-xpath.htm .. _`find, findall and findtext`: http://effbot.org/zone/element.htm#searching-for-subelements .. _`custom extension functions`: extensions.html#xpath-extension-functions .. _`XSLT extension elements`: extensions.html#xslt-extension-elements There are also specialized XPath evaluator classes that are more efficient for frequent evaluation: ``XPath`` and ``XPathEvaluator``. See the `performance comparison`_ to learn when to use which. Their semantics when used on Elements and ElementTrees are the same as for the ``xpath()`` method described here. .. _`performance comparison`: performance.html#xpath The ``xpath()`` method ---------------------- For ElementTree, the xpath method performs a global XPath query against the document (if absolute) or against the root node (if relative): .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> f = StringIO('') >>> tree = etree.parse(f) >>> r = tree.xpath('/foo/bar') >>> len(r) 1 >>> r[0].tag 'bar' >>> r = tree.xpath('bar') >>> r[0].tag 'bar' When ``xpath()`` is used on an Element, the XPath expression is evaluated against the element (if relative) or against the root tree (if absolute): .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> root = tree.getroot() >>> r = root.xpath('bar') >>> r[0].tag 'bar' >>> bar = root[0] >>> r = bar.xpath('/foo/bar') >>> r[0].tag 'bar' >>> tree = bar.getroottree() >>> r = tree.xpath('/foo/bar') >>> r[0].tag 'bar' The ``xpath()`` method has support for XPath variables: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> expr = "//*[local-name() = $name]" >>> print(root.xpath(expr, name = "foo")[0].tag) foo >>> print(root.xpath(expr, name = "bar")[0].tag) bar >>> print(root.xpath("$text", text = "Hello World!")) Hello World! Namespaces and prefixes ----------------------- If your XPath expression uses namespace prefixes, you must define them in a prefix mapping. To this end, pass a dictionary to the ``namespaces`` keyword argument that maps the namespace prefixes used in the XPath expression to namespace URIs: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> f = StringIO('''\ ... ... Text ... ... ''') >>> doc = etree.parse(f) >>> r = doc.xpath('/t:foo/b:bar', ... namespaces={'t': 'http://codespeak.net/ns/test1', ... 'b': 'http://codespeak.net/ns/test2'}) >>> len(r) 1 >>> r[0].tag '{http://codespeak.net/ns/test2}bar' >>> r[0].text 'Text' The prefixes you choose here are not linked to the prefixes used inside the XML document. The document may define whatever prefixes it likes, including the empty prefix, without breaking the above code. Note that XPath does not have a notion of a default namespace. The empty prefix is therefore undefined for XPath and cannot be used in namespace prefix mappings. There is also an optional ``extensions`` argument which is used to define `custom extension functions`_ in Python that are local to this evaluation. The namespace prefixes that they use in the XPath expression must also be defined in the namespace prefix mapping. XPath return values ------------------- The return value types of XPath evaluations vary, depending on the XPath expression used: * True or False, when the XPath expression has a boolean result * a float, when the XPath expression has a numeric result (integer or float) * a 'smart' string (as described below), when the XPath expression has a string result. * a list of items, when the XPath expression has a list as result. The items may include Elements (also comments and processing instructions), strings and tuples. Text nodes and attributes in the result are returned as 'smart' string values. Namespace declarations are returned as tuples of strings: ``(prefix, URI)``. XPath string results are 'smart' in that they provide a ``getparent()`` method that knows their origin: * for attribute values, ``result.getparent()`` returns the Element that carries them. An example is ``//foo/@attribute``, where the parent would be a ``foo`` Element. * for the ``text()`` function (as in ``//text()``), it returns the Element that contains the text or tail that was returned. You can distinguish between different text origins with the boolean properties ``is_text``, ``is_tail`` and ``is_attribute``. Note that ``getparent()`` may not always return an Element. For example, the XPath functions ``string()`` and ``concat()`` will construct strings that do not have an origin. For them, ``getparent()`` will return None. There are certain cases where the smart string behaviour is undesirable. For example, it means that the tree will be kept alive by the string, which may have a considerable memory impact in the case that the string value is the only thing in the tree that is actually of interest. For these cases, you can deactivate the parental relationship using the keyword argument ``smart_strings``. >>> root = etree.XML("TEXT") >>> find_text = etree.XPath("//text()") >>> text = find_text(root)[0] >>> print(text) TEXT >>> print(text.getparent().text) TEXT >>> find_text = etree.XPath("//text()", smart_strings=False) >>> text = find_text(root)[0] >>> print(text) TEXT >>> hasattr(text, 'getparent') False Generating XPath expressions ---------------------------- ElementTree objects have a method ``getpath(element)``, which returns a structural, absolute XPath expression to find that element: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> a = etree.Element("a") >>> b = etree.SubElement(a, "b") >>> c = etree.SubElement(a, "c") >>> d1 = etree.SubElement(c, "d") >>> d2 = etree.SubElement(c, "d") >>> tree = etree.ElementTree(c) >>> print(tree.getpath(d2)) /c/d[2] >>> tree.xpath(tree.getpath(d2)) == [d2] True The ``XPath`` class ------------------- The ``XPath`` class compiles an XPath expression into a callable function: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> root = etree.XML("") >>> find = etree.XPath("//b") >>> print(find(root)[0].tag) b The compilation takes as much time as in the ``xpath()`` method, but it is done only once per class instantiation. This makes it especially efficient for repeated evaluation of the same XPath expression. Just like the ``xpath()`` method, the ``XPath`` class supports XPath variables: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> count_elements = etree.XPath("count(//*[local-name() = $name])") >>> print(count_elements(root, name = "a")) 1.0 >>> print(count_elements(root, name = "b")) 2.0 This supports very efficient evaluation of modified versions of an XPath expression, as compilation is still only required once. Prefix-to-namespace mappings can be passed as second parameter: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> root = etree.XML("") >>> find = etree.XPath("//n:b", namespaces={'n':'NS'}) >>> print(find(root)[0].tag) {NS}b By default, ``XPath`` supports regular expressions in the EXSLT_ namespace: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> regexpNS = "http://exslt.org/regular-expressions" >>> find = etree.XPath("//*[re:test(., '^abc$', 'i')]", ... namespaces={'re':regexpNS}) >>> root = etree.XML("aBaBc") >>> print(find(root)[0].text) aBc .. _EXSLT: http://www.exslt.org/ You can disable this with the boolean keyword argument ``regexp`` which defaults to True. The ``XPathEvaluator`` classes ------------------------------ lxml.etree provides two other efficient XPath evaluators that work on ElementTrees or Elements respectively: ``XPathDocumentEvaluator`` and ``XPathElementEvaluator``. They are automatically selected if you use the XPathEvaluator helper for instantiation: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> root = etree.XML("") >>> xpatheval = etree.XPathEvaluator(root) >>> print(isinstance(xpatheval, etree.XPathElementEvaluator)) True >>> print(xpatheval("//b")[0].tag) b This class provides efficient support for evaluating different XPath expressions on the same Element or ElementTree. ``ETXPath`` ----------- ElementTree supports a language named ElementPath_ in its ``find*()`` methods. One of the main differences between XPath and ElementPath is that the XPath language requires an indirection through prefixes for namespace support, whereas ElementTree uses the Clark notation (``{ns}name``) to avoid prefixes completely. The other major difference regards the capabilities of both path languages. Where XPath supports various sophisticated ways of restricting the result set through functions and boolean expressions, ElementPath only supports pure path traversal without nesting or further conditions. So, while the ElementPath syntax is self-contained and therefore easier to write and handle, XPath is much more powerful and expressive. lxml.etree bridges this gap through the class ``ETXPath``, which accepts XPath expressions with namespaces in Clark notation. It is identical to the ``XPath`` class, except for the namespace notation. Normally, you would write: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> root = etree.XML("") >>> find = etree.XPath("//p:b", namespaces={'p' : 'ns'}) >>> print(find(root)[0].tag) {ns}b ``ETXPath`` allows you to change this to: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> find = etree.ETXPath("//{ns}b") >>> print(find(root)[0].tag) {ns}b Error handling -------------- lxml.etree raises exceptions when errors occur while parsing or evaluating an XPath expression: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> find = etree.XPath("\\") Traceback (most recent call last): ... lxml.etree.XPathSyntaxError: Invalid expression lxml will also try to give you a hint what went wrong, so if you pass a more complex expression, you may get a somewhat more specific error: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> find = etree.XPath("//*[1.1.1]") Traceback (most recent call last): ... lxml.etree.XPathSyntaxError: Invalid predicate During evaluation, lxml will emit an XPathEvalError on errors: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> find = etree.XPath("//ns:a") >>> find(root) Traceback (most recent call last): ... lxml.etree.XPathEvalError: Undefined namespace prefix This works for the ``XPath`` class, however, the other evaluators (including the ``xpath()`` method) are one-shot operations that do parsing and evaluation in one step. They therefore raise evaluation exceptions in all cases: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> root = etree.Element("test") >>> find = root.xpath("//*[1.1.1]") Traceback (most recent call last): ... lxml.etree.XPathEvalError: Invalid predicate >>> find = root.xpath("//ns:a") Traceback (most recent call last): ... lxml.etree.XPathEvalError: Undefined namespace prefix >>> find = root.xpath("\\") Traceback (most recent call last): ... lxml.etree.XPathEvalError: Invalid expression Note that lxml versions before 1.3 always raised an ``XPathSyntaxError`` for all errors, including evaluation errors. The best way to support older versions is to except on the superclass ``XPathError``. XSLT ==== lxml.etree introduces a new class, lxml.etree.XSLT. The class can be given an ElementTree object to construct an XSLT transformer: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> f = StringIO('''\ ... ... ... ... ... ''') >>> xslt_doc = etree.parse(f) >>> transform = etree.XSLT(xslt_doc) You can then run the transformation on an ElementTree document by simply calling it, and this results in another ElementTree object: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> f = StringIO('Text') >>> doc = etree.parse(f) >>> result_tree = transform(doc) By default, XSLT supports all extension functions from libxslt and libexslt as well as Python regular expressions through the `EXSLT regexp functions`_. Also see the documentation on `custom extension functions`_, `XSLT extension elements`_ and `document resolvers`_. There is a separate section on `controlling access`_ to external documents and resources. .. _`EXSLT regexp functions`: http://www.exslt.org/regexp/ .. _`document resolvers`: resolvers.html .. _`controlling access`: resolvers.html#i-o-access-control-in-xslt XSLT result objects ------------------- The result of an XSL transformation can be accessed like a normal ElementTree document: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> f = StringIO('Text') >>> doc = etree.parse(f) >>> result = transform(doc) >>> result.getroot().text 'Text' but, as opposed to normal ElementTree objects, can also be turned into an (XML or text) string by applying the str() function: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> str(result) '\nText\n' The result is always a plain string, encoded as requested by the ``xsl:output`` element in the stylesheet. If you want a Python unicode string instead, you should set this encoding to ``UTF-8`` (unless the `ASCII` default is sufficient). This allows you to call the builtin ``unicode()`` function on the result: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> unicode(result) u'\nText\n' You can use other encodings at the cost of multiple recoding. Encodings that are not supported by Python will result in an error: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> xslt_tree = etree.XML('''\ ... ... ... ... ... ... ''') >>> transform = etree.XSLT(xslt_tree) >>> result = transform(doc) >>> unicode(result) Traceback (most recent call last): ... LookupError: unknown encoding: UCS4 Stylesheet parameters --------------------- It is possible to pass parameters, in the form of XPath expressions, to the XSLT template: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> xslt_tree = etree.XML('''\ ... ... ... ... ... ... ''') >>> transform = etree.XSLT(xslt_tree) >>> f = StringIO('Text') >>> doc = etree.parse(f) The parameters are passed as keyword parameters to the transform call. First, let's try passing in a simple integer expression: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> result = transform(doc, a="5") >>> str(result) '\n5\n' You can use any valid XPath expression as parameter value: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> result = transform(doc, a="/a/b/text()") >>> str(result) '\nText\n' Passing a string expression looks like this: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> result = transform(doc, a="'A'") >>> str(result) '\nA\n' To pass a string that (potentially) contains quotes, you can use the ``.strparam()`` class method. Note that it does not escape the string. Instead, it returns an opaque object that keeps the string value. .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> plain_string_value = etree.XSLT.strparam( ... """ It's "Monty Python" """) >>> result = transform(doc, a=plain_string_value) >>> str(result) '\n It\'s "Monty Python" \n' The ``xslt()`` tree method -------------------------- There's also a convenience method on ElementTree objects for doing XSL transformations. This is less efficient if you want to apply the same XSL transformation to multiple documents, but is shorter to write for one-shot operations, as you do not have to instantiate a stylesheet yourself: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> result = doc.xslt(xslt_tree, a="'A'") >>> str(result) '\nA\n' This is a shortcut for the following code: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> transform = etree.XSLT(xslt_tree) >>> result = transform(doc, a="'A'") >>> str(result) '\nA\n' Dealing with stylesheet complexity ---------------------------------- Some applications require a larger set of rather diverse stylesheets. lxml.etree allows you to deal with this in a number of ways. Here are some ideas to try. The most simple way to reduce the diversity is by using XSLT parameters that you pass at call time to configure the stylesheets. The ``partial()`` function in the ``functools`` module of Python 2.5 may come in handy here. It allows you to bind a set of keyword arguments (i.e. stylesheet parameters) to a reference of a callable stylesheet. The same works for instances of the ``XPath()`` evaluator, obviously. You may also consider creating stylesheets programmatically. Just create an XSL tree, e.g. from a parsed template, and then add or replace parts as you see fit. Passing an XSL tree into the ``XSLT()`` constructor multiple times will create independent stylesheets, so later modifications of the tree will not be reflected in the already created stylesheets. This makes stylesheet generation very straight forward. A third thing to remember is the support for `custom extension functions`_ and `XSLT extension elements`_. Some things are much easier to express in XSLT than in Python, while for others it is the complete opposite. Finding the right mixture of Python code and XSL code can help a great deal in keeping applications well designed and maintainable. Profiling --------- If you want to know how your stylesheet performed, pass the ``profile_run`` keyword to the transform: .. sourcecode:: pycon >>> result = transform(doc, a="/a/b/text()", profile_run=True) >>> profile = result.xslt_profile The value of the ``xslt_profile`` property is an ElementTree with profiling data about each template, similar to the following: .. sourcecode:: xml