How to remove attribute from root element in Python xml etree ElementTree

Question

My file contains the following data:

Original:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> <url> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> <loc>http://www.example.com</loc></url></urlset>

Expected:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><urlset> <url> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> <loc>http://www.example.com</loc></url></urlset>

I use etree to parse the file and I want to remove the attribute from the root element 'urlset'

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse("/Users/hsyang/Downloads/VI-0-11-14-2016_20.xml")
root = tree.getroot()

print root.attrib
>> {}

root.attrib.pop("xmlns", None)

print root.attrib
>> {}
ET.tostring(root)

I thought I was supposed to get {xmlns:"http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"} when i print root.attrib the first time but I got an empty dictionary. Can someone help?

Appreciate it!

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:24:53Z

1

xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9" looks like a regular attribute but it is a special case, namely a namespace declaration.

Removing, adding, or modifying namespaces can be quite hard. "Normal" attributes are stored in an element's writable attrib property. Namespace mappings on the other hand are not readily available via the API (in the lxml library, elements do have a nsmap property, but it is read-only).

I suggest a simple textual search-and-replace operation, similar to the answer to Modify namespaces in a given xml document with lxml. Something like this:

with open("input.xml", "r") as infile, open("output.xml", "w") as outfile:
    data = infile.read()
    data = data.replace(' xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"', '')
    outfile.write(data)

See also How to insert namespace and prefixes into an XML string with Python?.

edited May 23, 2017 at 12:24

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answered Dec 5, 2016 at 16:32

mzjn

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Comments

Gennady Kandaurov · Accepted Answer · 2016-12-02 21:32:46Z

0

In standard library xml.etree.ElementTree there is no special method to remove an attribute, but all attributes are stored in a attrib which is a dict and any attribute can be removed from attrib as a key from a dict:

    import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

    tree = ET.parse(file_path)
    root = tree.getroot()      

    print(root.attrib)  # {'xyz': '123'}

    root.attrib.pop("xyz", None)  # None is to not raise an exception if xyz does not exist

    print(root.attrib)  # {}

    ET.tostring(root)
    '<urlset> <url> <changefreq>daily</changefreq> <loc>http://www.example.com</loc></url></urlset>'

edited Dec 2, 2016 at 21:32

answered Dec 2, 2016 at 6:07

Gennady Kandaurov

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7 Comments

Yumi Over a year ago

the real key-value of the root attribute in my file is actually <urlset xmlns="sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"> but for simplicity i swapped it with xyz="123". I was wondering if xmlns means anything special in XML so that it's not treated as regular attribute keys here...just my non-developer suspicion.

Gennady Kandaurov Over a year ago

Yes, xmlns has special meaning in xml: w3schools.com/xml/xml_namespaces.asp So you have to remove that attribute carefully

Yumi Over a year ago

Got it. Thanks! Just wanted to clarify tho - I was using xml.etree.ElementTree. I tried both methods you suggested and both methods (.pop, strip_attributes) raised errors; I think in your examples you were referring to lxml.etree. I tried to find any method that does the same in xml.etree but could not find any.

Gennady Kandaurov Over a year ago

You are right, examples were for lxml. Updated for xml.etree.ElementTree.

Gennady Kandaurov Over a year ago

But this method can't be applied to xmlns, since xmlns is not stored in attrib attribute.

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