Fastest way to parse XML in Python

Question

I'm trying to find the qickest way to parse sensor data from a smartphone for a realtime application. The Format looks like this:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8' standalone='yes' ?>
<NodeId>0</NodeId>
<Accelerometer>
    <Accelerometer1>-.1875240802764893</Accelerometer1>
    <Accelerometer2>4.6734819412231445</Accelerometer2>
    <Accelerometer3>8.312667846679688</Accelerometer3>
</Accelerometer>
<Gyroscope>
    <Gyroscope1>-0.10551923513412476</Gyroscope1>
    <Gyroscope2>0.009592439979314804</Gyroscope2>
    <Gyroscope3>0.019185146316885948</Gyroscope3>
</Gyroscope>
<Gravity>
    <Gravity1>-1.2976515293121338</Gravity1>
    <Gravity2>3.672762393951416</Gravity2>
    <Gravity3>9.003327369689941</Gravity3>
</Gravity>
<TimeStamp>1377767599250</TimeStamp>

The available sensor data might change depending on the phone. But once the connection is established the structure of the packages won't change, so maybe parts of the parsing could be skipped.

A general suggestion - depending on how fast your I/O is (are you fetching the data over a slow connection?) and how big the file is it may make sense to parse the data as you're transmitting it, i.e. use a SAX parser and feed it the chunks of markup as you receive it. — Frerich Raabe
– Frerich Raabe, Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 10:17
Many of the key considerations in selecting a parser are about memory efficiency, as opposed to time efficiency. Your question doesn't speak to that, and the accepted answer only speaks to DOM-style solutions, which inherently are somewhat memory-inefficient. — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Aug 12, 2015 at 15:17
@FrerichRaabe, ...a parser implementing the SAX API was the old model for streaming, but I'd actually go with lxml.iterparse these days -- still fast and memory-efficient, but much less painful to work with. — Charles Duffy
– Charles Duffy, Commented Aug 12, 2015 at 15:18

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:34:34Z

19

If parsing speed is a key factor for you, consider using cElementTree or lxml.

There are definitely more options out there, see these threads:

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:34

CommunityBot

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answered Aug 29, 2013 at 9:48

alecxe

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1 Comment

Denis Barmenkov Over a year ago

Deprecated since version 3.3: The xml.etree.cElementTree module is deprecated.

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