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# XPath and XSLT with lxml

lxml supports both XPath and XSLT through libxml2 and libxslt in a standards compliant way.

Contents

- XPath
  - The `xpath()` method
  - XPath return values
  - Generating XPath expressions
  - The `XPath` class
  - The `XPathEvaluator` classes
  - `ETXPath`
  - Error handling
- XSLT
  - XSLT result objects
  - Stylesheet parameters
  - The `xslt()` tree method
  - Profiling

The usual setup procedure:

    >>> from lxml import etree
    >>> from StringIO import StringIO

# 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.

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.

## 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):

    >>> f = StringIO('<foo><bar></bar></foo>')
    >>> 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):

    >>> 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:

    >>> 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!

Optionally, you can provide a `namespaces` keyword argument, which should be a dictionary mapping the namespace prefixes used in the XPath expression to namespace URIs:

    >>> f = StringIO('''\
    ... <a:foo xmlns:a="http://codespeak.net/ns/test1"
    ...        xmlns:b="http://codespeak.net/ns/test2">
    ...    <b:bar>Text</b:bar>
    ... </a:foo>
    ... ''')
    >>> 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'

There is also an optional `extensions` argument which is used to define custom extension functions in Python that are local to this evaluation.

## XPath return values

The return values 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.

## Generating XPath expressions

ElementTree objects have a method `getpath(element)`, which returns a structural, absolute XPath expression to find that element:

    >>> 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:

    >>> root = etree.XML("<root><a><b/></a><b/></root>")

    >>> 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:

    >>> 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:

    >>> root = etree.XML("<root xmlns='NS'><a><b/></a><b/></root>")

    >>> 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:

    >>> regexpNS = "http://exslt.org/regular-expressions"
    >>> find = etree.XPath("//*[re:test(., '^abc$', 'i')]",
    ...                    namespaces={'re':regexpNS})

    >>> root = etree.XML("<root><a>aB</a><b>aBc</b></root>")
    >>> print find(root)[0].text
    aBc

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:

    >>> root = etree.XML("<root><a><b/></a><b/></root>")
    >>> 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:

    >>> root = etree.XML("<root xmlns='ns'><a><b/></a><b/></root>")

    >>> find = etree.XPath("//p:b", namespaces={'p' : 'ns'})
    >>> print find(root)[0].tag
    {ns}b

`ETXPath` allows you to change this to:

    >>> 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:

    >>> find = etree.XPath("\\")
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      ...
    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:

    >>> find = etree.XPath("//*[1.1.1]")
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      ...
    XPathSyntaxError: Invalid predicate

During evaluation, lxml will emit an XPathEvalError on errors:

    >>> find = etree.XPath("//ns:a")
    >>> find(root)
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      ...
    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:

    >>> root = etree.Element("test")
    >>> find = root.xpath("//*[1.1.1]")
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      ...
    XPathEvalError: Invalid predicate

    >>> find = root.xpath("//ns:a")
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      ...
    XPathEvalError: Undefined namespace prefix

    >>> find = root.xpath("\\")
    Traceback (most recent call last):
      ...
    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:

    >>> f = StringIO('''\
    ... <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
    ...     xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    ...     <xsl:template match="/">
    ...         <foo><xsl:value-of select="/a/b/text()" /></foo>
    ...     </xsl:template>
    ... </xsl:stylesheet>''')
    >>> 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:

    >>> f = StringIO('<a><b>Text</b></a>')
    >>> 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 and document resolvers. There is a separate section on controlling access to external documents and resources.

## XSLT result objects

The result of an XSL transformation can be accessed like a normal ElementTree document:

    >>> f = StringIO('<a><b>Text</b></a>')
    >>> 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:

    >>> str(result)
    '<?xml version="1.0"?>\n<foo>Text</foo>\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:

    >>> unicode(result)
    u'<?xml version="1.0"?>\n<foo>Text</foo>\n'

You can use other encodings at the cost of multiple recoding. Encodings that are not supported by Python will result in an error:

    >>> xslt_tree = etree.XML('''\
    ... <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
    ...     xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    ...     <xsl:output encoding="UCS4"/>
    ...     <xsl:template match="/">
    ...         <foo><xsl:value-of select="/a/b/text()" /></foo>
    ...     </xsl:template>
    ... </xsl:stylesheet>''')
    >>> 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:

    >>> xslt_tree = etree.XML('''\
    ... <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
    ...     xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    ...     <xsl:template match="/">
    ...         <foo><xsl:value-of select="$a" /></foo>
    ...     </xsl:template>
    ... </xsl:stylesheet>''')
    >>> transform = etree.XSLT(xslt_tree)
    >>> f = StringIO('<a><b>Text</b></a>')
    >>> doc = etree.parse(f)

The parameters are passed as keyword parameters to the transform call. First let's try passing in a simple string expression:

    >>> result = transform(doc, a="'A'")
    >>> str(result)
    '<?xml version="1.0"?>\n<foo>A</foo>\n'

Let's try a non-string XPath expression now:

    >>> result = transform(doc, a="/a/b/text()")
    >>> str(result)
    '<?xml version="1.0"?>\n<foo>Text</foo>\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:

    >>> result = doc.xslt(xslt_tree, a="'A'")
    >>> str(result)
    '<?xml version="1.0"?>\n<foo>A</foo>\n'

This is a shortcut for the following code:

    >>> transform = etree.XSLT(xslt_tree)
    >>> result = transform(doc, a="'A'")
    >>> str(result)
    '<?xml version="1.0"?>\n<foo>A</foo>\n'

## Profiling

If you want to know how your stylesheet performed, pass the `profile_run` keyword to the transform:

    >>> 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:

    <profile>
      <template rank="1" match="/" name="" mode="" calls="1" time="1" average="1"/>
    </profile>

Note that this is a read-only document. You must not move any of its elements to other documents. Please deep-copy the document if you need to modify it. If you want to free it from memory, just do:

    >>> del result.xslt_profile