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

Question

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?

score 49 · Accepted Answer · edited Jun 13 '14 at 11:46

49

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>

edited Jun 13 '14 at 11:46

Percival Ulysses

1,133
11
18

answered Oct 14 '09 at 17:52

Jeff Ober

4,967
20
15

2

Thanks so much! This was driving me crazy :D – Geo Oct 14 '09 at 17:54
12

In Python 3, it looks nicer if you `decode` from `bytes`: `print(etree.tostring(root, pretty_print=True).decode()))` – phoenix Mar 04 '19 at 17:22

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

1 Answers1