DEV Community

Blackmare01wolf
Blackmare01wolf

Posted on

Mastering lxml in Python: Parse XML and HTML Like a Pro

#python #xml #webscraping #html

Introduction

XML and HTML are everywhere—from APIs to scraped websites. In this post, I’ll show you how to use lxml, a powerful and fast Python library for parsing and manipulating XML/HTML.

Installation 

pip install lxml
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Parsing XML 

from lxml import etree

xml_data = '''<root><item>One</item><item>Two</item></root>'''
root = etree.fromstring(xml_data)

for item in root.findall('item'):
    print(item.text)
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Parsing HTML 

from lxml import html

html_content = '<html><body><h1>Hello</h1></body></html>'
tree = html.fromstring(html_content)

heading = tree.xpath('//h1/text()')
print(heading[0])  # Output: Hello
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

XPath Basics

Explain how XPath is used to select nodes:

links = tree.xpath('//a/@href')
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Error Handling & Best Practices

  • Use try/except
  • Validate structure before parsing

Real-world Use Cases

  • Scraping
  • Working with config files
  • Parsing API responses

Conclusion

lxml gives you superpowers for XML and HTML parsing. Whether you're a beginner or advanced dev, it’s worth mastering!

Top comments (1)

Collapse
 
cyber_shadow_9b4e41047daf profile image
Cyber Shadow •

This is what i want, thanks for posting this