为什么ElementTree无法正确解析此XML标签？

Question

The XML file looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>

<MINiML
   xmlns="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/info/MINiML"
   xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/info/MINiML http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/info/MINiML.xsd"
   version="0.5.0" >

  <Contributor iid="contrib1">
    <Person><First>ENCODE</First><Last>DCC</Last></Person>
    <Email>encode-help@lists.stanford.edu</Email>
    <Organization>ENCODE DCC</Organization>
    <Address>
      <Line>300 Pasteur Dr</Line>
      <City>Stanford</City>
      <State>CA</State>
      <Zip-Code>94305-5120</Zip-Code>
      <Country>USA</Country>
    </Address>
  </Contributor>
</MINiML>

Here is how I use the ElementTree in Python:

import xml.etree.cElementTree as ET
tree=ET.parse("the_file_above.xml")
root = tree.getroot()
for c in root:
    print c.tag, c.attrib

It returns:

{http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/info/MINiML}Contributor {'iid': 'contrib1'}

And the value of c.tag is '{http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/info/MINiML}Contributor' , which I expected to be Contributor . I'm not sure how the long url mixed in the tag. Does anyone have ideas about this?

Answer 1

This library (like others) tries to encode the namespace used into the tag names. This is done by prepending the namespace in curly braces. So this is just a feature you might not be aware of and which might be cumbersome to you. But it is necessary in case you mix XMLs from various sources with various name spaces in which otherwise tag names would clash.