I've been playing with Aaron Swarz's XML Tramp as an intuitive/pythonic way of processing XML. The model/syntax isn't explicitly documented, but from the source and (mostly) examples, this is what I've figured out:
XML Tramp Conventions
- Elements have a list of children '[]'
- iterate over children:
for child in doc - get first and second (splice) child:
doc[0:2] - get named child element book:
doc.bookordoc['book']
- iterate over children:
- Elements have a dict of attributes '()'
- test for an attribute COLOR:
if 'COLOR' in doc.book() - get attribute COLOR value:
doc.book('COLOR') - assign attribute value:
doc.book(COLOR='blue')
- test for an attribute COLOR:
- Namespaces (NS) are indicated with a period, the period indicates its
not a literal value (as with quotes), but a namespace corresponding to an
arbitrary but specified prefix
- NS qualified elments now appear unquoted within brackets:
doc[ns.book] - NS qualified attributes now appear unquoted within parenthesis:
doc(ns.COLOR)
- NS qualified elments now appear unquoted within brackets:
- To reserialize an object use
print doc.__repr__(True)
