lxml API

Package lxml :: Module builder :: Class ElementMaker

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Class ElementMaker

source code

object --+
 |
 ElementMaker

Element generator factory.

Unlike the ordinary Element factory, the E factory allows you to pass in more than just a tag and some optional attributes; you can also pass in text and other elements. The text is added as either text or tail attributes, and elements are inserted at the right spot. Some small examples:

>>> from lxml import etree as ET
>>> from lxml.builder import E
>>> ET.tostring(E("tag"))
'<tag/>'
>>> ET.tostring(E("tag", "text"))
'<tag>text</tag>'
>>> ET.tostring(E("tag", "text", key="value"))
'<tag key="value">text</tag>'
>>> ET.tostring(E("tag", E("subtag", "text"), "tail"))
'<tag><subtag>text</subtag>tail</tag>'

For simple tags, the factory also allows you to write E.tag(...) instead of E('tag', ...):

>>> ET.tostring(E.tag())
'<tag/>'
>>> ET.tostring(E.tag("text"))
'<tag>text</tag>'
>>> ET.tostring(E.tag(E.subtag("text"), "tail"))
'<tag><subtag>text</subtag>tail</tag>'

Here's a somewhat larger example; this shows how to generate HTML documents, using a mix of prepared factory functions for inline elements, nested E.tag calls, and embedded XHTML fragments:

# some common inline elements
A = E.a
I = E.i
B = E.b
def CLASS(v):
 # helper function, 'class' is a reserved word
 return {'class': v}
page = (
 E.html(
 E.head(
 E.title("This is a sample document")
 ),
 E.body(
 E.h1("Hello!", CLASS("title")),
 E.p("This is a paragraph with ", B("bold"), " text in it!"),
 E.p("This is another paragraph, with a ",
 A("link", href="http://www.python.org"), "."),
 E.p("Here are some reserved characters: <spam&egg>."),
 ET.XML("<p>And finally, here is an embedded XHTML fragment.</p>"),
 )
 )
)
print ET.tostring(page)

Here's a prettyprinted version of the output from the above script:

<html>
 <head>
 <title>This is a sample document</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <h1 class="title">Hello!</h1>
 <p>This is a paragraph with <b>bold</b> text in it!</p>
 <p>This is another paragraph, with <a href="http://www.python.org">link</a>.</p>
 <p>Here are some reserved characters: &lt;spam&amp;egg&gt;.</p>
 <p>And finally, here is an embedded XHTML fragment.</p>
 </body>
</html>

For namespace support, you can pass a namespace map (nsmap) and/or a specific target namespace to the ElementMaker class:

>>> E = ElementMaker(namespace="http://my.ns/")
>>> print(ET.tostring( E.test ))
<test xmlns="http://my.ns/"/>
>>> E = ElementMaker(namespace="http://my.ns/", nsmap={'p':'http://my.ns/'})
>>> print(ET.tostring( E.test ))
<p:test xmlns:p="http://my.ns/"/>

Instance Methods [hide private]

__init__(self, typemap=None, namespace=None, nsmap=None, makeelement=None)
x.__init__(...) initializes x; see help(type(x)) for signature source code

__call__(x, ...)
x(...) source code

__getattr__(self, tag) source code

__getattribute__(...)
x.__getattribute__('name') <==> x.name source code

a new object with type S, a subtype of T

__new__(T, S, ...) source code

__reduce__(...)
helper for pickle source code

__reduce_cython__(...) source code

__setstate__(...) source code

__setstate_cython__(...) source code

Inherited from object: __delattr__, __format__, __hash__, __reduce_ex__, __repr__, __setattr__, __sizeof__, __str__, __subclasshook__