CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonxmlxpathlxmlelementtree
aAnnAa
aAnnAa

Reputation: 145

Comments in ET: more than comment tag

I have a xml file like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE Chapter PUBLIC 'blub' 'blub.dtd'>
<Chapter>
    <Tag>
        <TagEntry y.validity.allowed="true" y.validity.mode="positive">
            <!--Kommentar 1-->
            <!--Kommentar 2-->
            <!--Kommentar 3-->Inhalt 1<!--Kommentar 4--></TagEntry>
        <TagEntry>
            Inhalt 2 erg&#228;nzt <!--Kommentar 5-->mit Umlaut
        </TagEntry>
        <TagBase>
            <!--Kommentar 6-->
            <!--Kommentar 7-->Inhalt 3</TagBase>
        <TagNothing>
            Inhalt 3<!--Kommentar 8-->
        </TagNothing>
    </Tag>
</Chapter>

Now I want to iterate over the comments. I did it with lxml.etree as ET-tree:

comments = root.xpath('//comment()')
for comment in comments:
    print(ET.tostring(comment))

But instead of printing all the comments without the text from the parent node, it prints this:

b'<!--Kommentar 1-->'
b'<!--Kommentar 2-->'
b'<!--Kommentar 3-->Inhalt 1'
b'<!--Kommentar 4-->'
b'<!--Kommentar 5-->mit Umlaut\n\t\t'
b'<!--Kommentar 6-->'
b'<!--Kommentar 7-->Inhalt 3'
b'<!--Kommentar 8-->\n\t\t'

Can someone explain to me, why this happens and how I can change maybe the xpath-expression to just return the comment nodes without the text being appended to the end of the comment.

Thank you!

Upvotes: 0

Views: 53

Answers (1)

mzjn
mzjn

Reputation: 51002

The comment nodes are written with the tail text included (the default; see https://lxml.de/api/lxml.etree-module.html#tostring).

To get rid of the tails, change 

print(ET.tostring(comment))

to 

print(ET.tostring(comment, with_tail=False))

If you are just interested in the content of the comments and not the markup, use this:

print(comment.text)

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions