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  • Committer: Bazaar Package Importer
  • Author(s): Matthias Klose
  • Date: 2009-08-27 09:09:23 UTC
  • mfrom: (1.3.2 upstream)
  • Revision ID: james.westby@ubuntu.com-20090827090923-fwhvka191ir73s3x
Tags: 2.2.2-1
* New upstream version. Closes: #525961.
  - Includes html5parser. Closes: #521714.

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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
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<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />
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<meta name="generator" content="Docutils 0.4.1: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/" />
 
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<meta name="generator" content="Docutils 0.5: http://docutils.sourceforge.net/" />
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<title>APIs specific to lxml.etree</title>
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<div class="document" id="apis-specific-to-lxml-etree">
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<div class="sidemenu"><ul id="lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="index-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="index.html">lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#introduction">Introduction</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#documentation">Documentation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#download">Download</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#mailing-list">Mailing list</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#bug-tracker">Bug tracker</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#license">License</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#old-versions">Old Versions</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="intro-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="intro.html">Why lxml?</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="intro.html#motto">Motto</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="intro.html#aims">Aims</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="installation-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="installation.html">Installing lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#requirements">Requirements</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#installation">Installation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#building-lxml-from-sources">Building lxml from sources</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#ms-windows">MS Windows</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#macos-x">MacOS-X</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="lxml2-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="lxml2.html">What's new in lxml 2.0?</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml2.html#changes-in-etree-and-objectify">Changes in etree and objectify</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml2.html#new-modules">New modules</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="performance-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="performance.html">Benchmarks and Speed</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#general-notes">General notes</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#how-to-read-the-timings">How to read the timings</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#parsing-and-serialising">Parsing and Serialising</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#the-elementtree-api">The ElementTree API</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#xpath">XPath</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#a-longer-example">A longer example</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#lxml-objectify">lxml.objectify</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="compatibility-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="compatibility.html">ElementTree compatibility of lxml.etree</a></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="FAQ-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="FAQ.html">lxml FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#general-questions">General Questions</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#installation">Installation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#contributing">Contributing</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#bugs">Bugs</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#threading">Threading</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#parsing-and-serialisation">Parsing and Serialisation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#xpath-and-document-traversal">XPath and Document Traversal</a></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul><ul id="Developing with lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">Developing with lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="tutorial-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="tutorial.html">The lxml.etree Tutorial</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-element-class">The Element class</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-elementtree-class">The ElementTree class</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#parsing-from-strings-and-files">Parsing from strings and files</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#namespaces">Namespaces</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-e-factory">The E-factory</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#elementpath">ElementPath</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="api index-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="api/index.html">API reference</a></li></ul><ul class="menu current" id="api-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="api.html">APIs specific to lxml.etree</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#lxml-etree">lxml.etree</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#other-element-apis">Other Element APIs</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#trees-and-documents">Trees and Documents</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#iteration">Iteration</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#error-handling-on-exceptions">Error handling on exceptions</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#error-logging">Error logging</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#serialisation">Serialisation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#cdata">CDATA</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#xinclude-and-elementinclude">XInclude and ElementInclude</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#write-c14n-on-elementtree">write_c14n on ElementTree</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="parsing-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="parsing.html">Parsing XML and HTML with lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#parsers">Parsers</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#the-target-parser-interface">The target parser interface</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#the-feed-parser-interface">The feed parser interface</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#iterparse-and-iterwalk">iterparse and iterwalk</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="parsing.html#python-unicode-strings">Python unicode strings</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="validation-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="validation.html">Validation with lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#validation-at-parse-time">Validation at parse time</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#dtd">DTD</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#relaxng">RelaxNG</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#xmlschema">XMLSchema</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="validation.html#schematron">Schematron</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="xpathxslt-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="xpathxslt.html">XPath and XSLT with lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="xpathxslt.html#xpath">XPath</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="xpathxslt.html#xslt">XSLT</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="objectify-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="objectify.html">lxml.objectify</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#the-lxml-objectify-api">The lxml.objectify API</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#asserting-a-schema">Asserting a Schema</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#objectpath">ObjectPath</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#python-data-types">Python data types</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#how-data-types-are-matched">How data types are matched</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="objectify.html#what-is-different-from-lxml-etree">What is different from lxml.etree?</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="lxmlhtml-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="lxmlhtml.html">lxml.html</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#parsing-html">Parsing HTML</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#html-element-methods">HTML Element Methods</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#running-html-doctests">Running HTML doctests</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#creating-html-with-the-e-factory">Creating HTML with the E-factory</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#working-with-links">Working with links</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#forms">Forms</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#cleaning-up-html">Cleaning up HTML</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#html-diff">HTML Diff</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxmlhtml.html#examples">Examples</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="cssselect-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="cssselect.html">lxml.cssselect</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="cssselect.html#the-cssselector-class">The CSSSelector class</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="cssselect.html#css-selectors">CSS Selectors</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="cssselect.html#namespaces">Namespaces</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="cssselect.html#limitations">Limitations</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="elementsoup-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="elementsoup.html">BeautifulSoup Parser</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="elementsoup.html#parsing-with-the-soupparser">Parsing with the soupparser</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="elementsoup.html#entity-handling">Entity handling</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="elementsoup.html#using-soupparser-as-a-fallback">Using soupparser as a fallback</a></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul><ul id="Extending lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">Extending lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="resolvers-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="resolvers.html">Document loading and URL resolving</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="resolvers.html#uri-resolvers">URI Resolvers</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="resolvers.html#document-loading-in-context">Document loading in context</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="resolvers.html#i-o-access-control-in-xslt">I/O access control in XSLT</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="extensions-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="extensions.html">Python extensions for XPath and XSLT</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="extensions.html#xpath-extension-functions">XPath Extension functions</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="extensions.html#xslt-extension-elements">XSLT extension elements</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="element classes-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="element_classes.html">Using custom Element classes in lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="element_classes.html#element-initialization">Element initialization</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="element_classes.html#setting-up-a-class-lookup-scheme">Setting up a class lookup scheme</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="element_classes.html#implementing-namespaces">Implementing namespaces</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="sax-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="sax.html">Sax support</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="sax.html#building-a-tree-from-sax-events">Building a tree from SAX events</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="sax.html#producing-sax-events-from-an-elementtree-or-element">Producing SAX events from an ElementTree or Element</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="sax.html#interfacing-with-pulldom-minidom">Interfacing with pulldom/minidom</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="capi-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="capi.html">The public C-API of lxml.etree</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="capi.html#writing-external-modules-in-cython">Writing external modules in Cython</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="capi.html#writing-external-modules-in-c">Writing external modules in C</a></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul><ul id="Developing lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">Developing lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="build-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="build.html">How to build lxml from source</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#cython">Cython</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#subversion">Subversion</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#setuptools">Setuptools</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#running-the-tests-and-reporting-errors">Running the tests and reporting errors</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#contributing-an-egg">Contributing an egg</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#providing-newer-library-versions-on-mac-os-x">Providing newer library versions on Mac-OS X</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#static-linking-on-windows">Static linking on Windows</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="build.html#building-debian-packages-from-svn-sources">Building Debian packages from SVN sources</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="lxml source howto-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html">How to read the source of lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#what-is-cython">What is Cython?</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#where-to-start">Where to start?</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#lxml-etree">lxml.etree</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#python-modules">Python modules</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#lxml-objectify">lxml.objectify</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml-source-howto.html#lxml-html">lxml.html</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="changes 2 1 5-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="changes-2.1.5.html">Release Changelog</a></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="credits-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="credits.html">Credits</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="credits.html#main-contributors">Main contributors</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="credits.html#special-thanks-goes-to">Special thanks goes to:</a></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul></div><h1 class="title">APIs specific to lxml.etree</h1>
 
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<div class="sidemenu"><ul id="lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="index-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="index.html">lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#introduction">Introduction</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#documentation">Documentation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#download">Download</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#mailing-list">Mailing list</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#bug-tracker">Bug tracker</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#license">License</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="index.html#old-versions">Old Versions</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="intro-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="intro.html">Why lxml?</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="intro.html#motto">Motto</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="intro.html#aims">Aims</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="installation-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="installation.html">Installing lxml</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#requirements">Requirements</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#installation">Installation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#building-lxml-from-sources">Building lxml from sources</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#ms-windows">MS Windows</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="installation.html#macos-x">MacOS-X</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="lxml2-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="lxml2.html">What's new in lxml 2.0?</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml2.html#changes-in-etree-and-objectify">Changes in etree and objectify</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="lxml2.html#new-modules">New modules</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="performance-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="performance.html">Benchmarks and Speed</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#general-notes">General notes</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#how-to-read-the-timings">How to read the timings</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#parsing-and-serialising">Parsing and Serialising</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#the-elementtree-api">The ElementTree API</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#xpath">XPath</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#a-longer-example">A longer example</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="performance.html#lxml-objectify">lxml.objectify</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="compatibility-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="compatibility.html">ElementTree compatibility of lxml.etree</a></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="FAQ-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="FAQ.html">lxml FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#general-questions">General Questions</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#installation">Installation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#contributing">Contributing</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#bugs">Bugs</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#threading">Threading</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#parsing-and-serialisation">Parsing and Serialisation</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="FAQ.html#xpath-and-document-traversal">XPath and Document Traversal</a></li></ul></li></ul></li></ul><ul id="Developing with lxml-section"><li><span class="section title">Developing with lxml</span><ul class="menu foreign" id="tutorial-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="tutorial.html">The lxml.etree Tutorial</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-element-class">The Element class</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-elementtree-class">The ElementTree class</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#parsing-from-strings-and-files">Parsing from strings and files</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#namespaces">Namespaces</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#the-e-factory">The E-factory</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="tutorial.html#elementpath">ElementPath</a></li></ul></li></ul><ul class="menu foreign" id="api index-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="api/index.html">API reference</a></li></ul><ul class="menu current" id="api-menu"><li class="menu title"><a href="api.html">APIs specific to lxml.etree</a><ul class="submenu"><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#lxml-etree">lxml.etree</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#other-element-apis">Other Element APIs</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#trees-and-documents">Trees and Documents</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#iteration">Iteration</a></li><li class="menu item"><a href="api.html#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<p>lxml.etree tries to follow established APIs wherever possible.  Sometimes,
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however, the need to expose a feature in an easy way led to the invention of a
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new API.  This page describes the major differences and a few additions to the
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main ElementTree API.</p>
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<p>For a complete reference of the API, see the <a class="reference" href="api/index.html">generated API
 
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<p>For a complete reference of the API, see the <a class="reference external" href="api/index.html">generated API
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documentation</a>.</p>
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<p>Separate pages describe the support for <a class="reference" href="parsing.html">parsing XML</a>, executing <a class="reference" href="xpathxslt.html">XPath and
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XSLT</a>, <a class="reference" href="validation.html">validating XML</a> and interfacing with other XML tools through the
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<a class="reference" href="sax.html">SAX-API</a>.</p>
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<p>lxml is extremely extensible through <a class="reference" href="extensions.html">XPath functions in Python</a>, custom
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<a class="reference" href="element_classes.html">Python element classes</a>, custom <a class="reference" href="resolvers.html">URL resolvers</a> and even <a class="reference" href="capi.html">at the C-level</a>.</p>
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<div class="contents topic">
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<p class="topic-title first"><a id="contents" name="contents">Contents</a></p>
 
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<p>Separate pages describe the support for <a class="reference external" href="parsing.html">parsing XML</a>, executing <a class="reference external" href="xpathxslt.html">XPath and
 
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XSLT</a>, <a class="reference external" href="validation.html">validating XML</a> and interfacing with other XML tools through the
 
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<a class="reference external" href="sax.html">SAX-API</a>.</p>
 
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<p>lxml is extremely extensible through <a class="reference external" href="extensions.html">XPath functions in Python</a>, custom
 
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<a class="reference external" href="element_classes.html">Python element classes</a>, custom <a class="reference external" href="resolvers.html">URL resolvers</a> and even <a class="reference external" href="capi.html">at the C-level</a>.</p>
 
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<div class="contents topic" id="contents">
 
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<p class="topic-title first">Contents</p>
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<ul class="simple">
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<li><a class="reference" href="#lxml-etree" id="id1" name="id1">lxml.etree</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#other-element-apis" id="id2" name="id2">Other Element APIs</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#trees-and-documents" id="id3" name="id3">Trees and Documents</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#iteration" id="id4" name="id4">Iteration</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#error-handling-on-exceptions" id="id5" name="id5">Error handling on exceptions</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#error-logging" id="id6" name="id6">Error logging</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#serialisation" id="id7" name="id7">Serialisation</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#cdata" id="id8" name="id8">CDATA</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#xinclude-and-elementinclude" id="id9" name="id9">XInclude and ElementInclude</a></li>
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<li><a class="reference" href="#write-c14n-on-elementtree" id="id10" name="id10">write_c14n on ElementTree</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#lxml-etree" id="id1">lxml.etree</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#other-element-apis" id="id2">Other Element APIs</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#trees-and-documents" id="id3">Trees and Documents</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#iteration" id="id4">Iteration</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#error-handling-on-exceptions" id="id5">Error handling on exceptions</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#error-logging" id="id6">Error logging</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#serialisation" id="id7">Serialisation</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#cdata" id="id8">CDATA</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#xinclude-and-elementinclude" id="id9">XInclude and ElementInclude</a></li>
 
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<li><a class="reference internal" href="#write-c14n-on-elementtree" id="id10">write_c14n on ElementTree</a></li>
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</ul>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="lxml-etree" name="lxml-etree">lxml.etree</a></h1>
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<p>lxml.etree tries to follow the <a class="reference" href="http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm">ElementTree API</a> wherever it can.  There are
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however some incompatibilities (see <a class="reference" href="compatibility.html">compatibility</a>).  The extensions are
 
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<div class="section" id="lxml-etree">
 
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<h1>lxml.etree</h1>
 
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<p>lxml.etree tries to follow the <a class="reference external" href="http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm">ElementTree API</a> wherever it can.  There are
 
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however some incompatibilities (see <a class="reference external" href="compatibility.html">compatibility</a>).  The extensions are
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documented here.</p>
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<p>If you need to know which version of lxml is installed, you can access the
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<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">lxml.etree.LXML_VERSION</span></tt> attribute to retrieve a version tuple.  Note,
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<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">from</span> <span class="nn">lxml</span> <span class="k">import</span> <span class="n">etree</span>
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</pre></div>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="other-element-apis" name="other-element-apis">Other Element APIs</a></h1>
 
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<div class="section" id="other-element-apis">
 
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<h1>Other Element APIs</h1>
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<p>While lxml.etree itself uses the ElementTree API, it is possible to replace
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the Element implementation by <a class="reference" href="element_classes.html">custom element subclasses</a>.  This has been
 
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the Element implementation by <a class="reference external" href="element_classes.html">custom element subclasses</a>.  This has been
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used to implement well-known XML APIs on top of lxml.  For example, lxml ships
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with a data-binding implementation called <a class="reference" href="objectify.html">objectify</a>, which is similar to
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the <a class="reference" href="http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/4suite/amara/">Amara bindery</a> tool.</p>
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<p>lxml.etree comes with a number of <a class="reference" href="element_classes.html#setting-up-a-class-lookup-scheme">different lookup schemes</a> to customize the
 
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with a data-binding implementation called <a class="reference external" href="objectify.html">objectify</a>, which is similar to
 
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the <a class="reference external" href="http://uche.ogbuji.net/tech/4suite/amara/">Amara bindery</a> tool.</p>
 
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<p>lxml.etree comes with a number of <a class="reference external" href="element_classes.html#setting-up-a-class-lookup-scheme">different lookup schemes</a> to customize the
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mapping between libxml2 nodes and the Element classes used by lxml.etree.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="trees-and-documents" name="trees-and-documents">Trees and Documents</a></h1>
 
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<div class="section" id="trees-and-documents">
 
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<h1>Trees and Documents</h1>
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<p>Compared to the original ElementTree API, lxml.etree has an extended tree
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model.  It knows about parents and siblings of elements:</p>
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<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">root</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">Element</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">"root"</span><span class="p">)</span>
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contains this Element (e.g. for absolute XPath expressions).  All operations
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on an ElementTree use its explicit root node as reference.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="iteration" name="iteration">Iteration</a></h1>
 
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<div class="section" id="iteration">
 
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<h1>Iteration</h1>
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<p>The ElementTree API makes Elements iterable to supports iteration over their
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children.  Using the tree defined above, we get:</p>
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<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="p">[</span> <span class="n">child</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tag</span> <span class="k">for</span> <span class="n">child</span> <span class="ow">in</span> <span class="n">root</span> <span class="p">]</span>
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<span class="go">e</span>
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</pre></div>
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<p>See also the section on the utility functions <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">iterparse()</span></tt> and
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<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">iterwalk()</span></tt> in the <a class="reference" href="parsing.html#iterparse-and-iterwalk">parser documentation</a>.</p>
 
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<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">iterwalk()</span></tt> in the <a class="reference external" href="parsing.html#iterparse-and-iterwalk">parser documentation</a>.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="error-handling-on-exceptions" name="error-handling-on-exceptions">Error handling on exceptions</a></h1>
 
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<div class="section" id="error-handling-on-exceptions">
 
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<h1>Error handling on exceptions</h1>
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<p>Libxml2 provides error messages for failures, be it during parsing, XPath
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evaluation or schema validation.  The preferred way of accessing them is
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through the local <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">error_log</span></tt> property of the respective evaluator or
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<span class="go">&lt;string&gt;</span>
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</pre></div>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="error-logging" name="error-logging">Error logging</a></h1>
 
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<div class="section" id="error-logging">
 
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<h1>Error logging</h1>
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<p>lxml.etree supports logging libxml2 messages to the Python stdlib logging
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module.  This is done through the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">etree.PyErrorLog</span></tt> class.  It disables the
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error reporting from exceptions and forwards log messages to a Python logger.
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and the class <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">etree.PyErrorLog</span></tt> for help.  Note that this does not affect
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the local error logs of XSLT, XMLSchema, etc.</p>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="serialisation" name="serialisation">Serialisation</a></h1>
 
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<div class="section" id="serialisation">
 
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<h1>Serialisation</h1>
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<p>lxml.etree has direct support for pretty printing XML output.  Functions like
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<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ElementTree.write()</span></tt> and <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">tostring()</span></tt> support it through a keyword
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argument:</p>
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<span class="go">&lt;?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1'?&gt;</span>
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<span class="go">&lt;t&amp;#12576;st&gt;t&amp;#2570;st&lt;/t&amp;#12576;st&gt;</span>
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</pre></div>
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<p>Also see the general remarks on <a class="reference" href="parsing.html#python-unicode-strings">Unicode support</a>.</p>
 
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<p>Also see the general remarks on <a class="reference external" href="parsing.html#python-unicode-strings">Unicode support</a>.</p>
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<p>You can enable or disable the declaration explicitly by passing another
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keyword argument for the serialisation:</p>
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<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="k">print</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">etree</span><span class="o">.</span><span class="n">tostring</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="n">root</span><span class="p">,</span> <span class="n">xml_declaration</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="bp">True</span><span class="p">))</span>
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<span class="nc">lxml.etree.XMLSyntaxError</span>: <span class="n-Identifier">...</span>
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</pre></div>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="cdata" name="cdata">CDATA</a></h1>
 
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<div class="section" id="cdata">
 
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<h1>CDATA</h1>
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<p>By default, lxml's parser will strip CDATA sections from the tree and
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replace them by their plain text content.  As real applications for
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CDATA are rare, this is the best way to deal with this issue.</p>
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<span class="go">b'&lt;root&gt;&lt;![CDATA[test]]&gt;&lt;/root&gt;'</span>
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</pre></div>
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</div>
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<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="xinclude-and-elementinclude" name="xinclude-and-elementinclude">XInclude and ElementInclude</a></h1>
 
339
<div class="section" id="xinclude-and-elementinclude">
 
340
<h1>XInclude and ElementInclude</h1>
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<p>You can let lxml process xinclude statements in a document by calling the
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xinclude() method on a tree:</p>
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<div class="syntax"><pre><span class="gp">&gt;&gt;&gt; </span><span class="n">data</span> <span class="o">=</span> <span class="n">StringIO</span><span class="p">(</span><span class="s">'''</span><span class="se">\</span>
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<span class="go">&lt;a xml:base="doc/test.xml"/&gt;</span>
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<span class="go">&lt;/doc&gt;</span>
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</pre></div>
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<p>Note that the ElementTree compatible <a class="reference" href="http://effbot.org/zone/element-xinclude.htm">ElementInclude</a> module is also supported
 
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<p>Note that the ElementTree compatible <a class="reference external" href="http://effbot.org/zone/element-xinclude.htm">ElementInclude</a> module is also supported
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as <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">lxml.ElementInclude</span></tt>.  It has the additional advantage of supporting
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custom <a class="reference" href="resolvers.html">URL resolvers</a> at the Python level.  The normal XInclude mechanism
 
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custom <a class="reference external" href="resolvers.html">URL resolvers</a> at the Python level.  The normal XInclude mechanism
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cannot deploy these.  If you need ElementTree compatibility or custom
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resolvers, you have to stick to the external Python module.</p>
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</div>
362
 
<div class="section">
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<h1><a id="write-c14n-on-elementtree" name="write-c14n-on-elementtree">write_c14n on ElementTree</a></h1>
 
363
<div class="section" id="write-c14n-on-elementtree">
 
364
<h1>write_c14n on ElementTree</h1>
364
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<p>The lxml.etree.ElementTree class has a method write_c14n, which takes a file
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object as argument.  This file object will receive an UTF-8 representation of
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the canonicalized form of the XML, following the W3C C14N recommendation.  For
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</div>
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<div class="footer">
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<hr class="footer" />
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Generated on: 2009-01-06.
 
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Generated on: 2009-06-21.
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</div>
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</body>