Beginning Python®: Using Python 2.6 and Python 3.1

Chapter 15. Using Python for XML

XML has exploded in popularity over the past few years as a medium for storing and transmitting structured data. Python supports the wealth of standards that have sprung up around XML, either through standard libraries or a number of third-party libraries.

In this chapter you learn:

• Create and manipulate XML.

• Validate XML.

• Work with some of the standard libraries that come bundled with Python.

What Is XML?

The term XML is bandied around in corporate boardrooms and meetings around the world. Its flexibility and extensibility have encouraged people to think big, advocating XML for everything from a new, formatting-independent semantic code storage mechanism to a replacement for object serialization. But beyond the buzzwords and hype, what is it, really? Is it a panacea for the world's woes? Probably not. But it is a powerful, flexible, open-standards–based method of data storage. Its vocabulary is infinitely customizable to fit whatever kind of data you want to store. Its format makes it human readable, while remaining easy to parse for programs. It encourages semantic markup, rather than formatting-based markup, separating content and presentation from each other, so that a single piece of data can be repurposed many times and displayed in many ways.

A Hierarchical Markup Language

At the core of XML is a simple hierarchical markup language. Tags are used to mark off sections of content with different semantic meanings, and attributes are used to add metadata ...