Iterate xml using namespace prefix

Question

I have an xml file with a default namespace, like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <root xmlns="somelongnamespace"> <child>...</child> </root>

I starting using lxml to iterate and query this file, but I would like to use a namespace prefix, like this:

from lxml import etree xml = etree.parse("myfile.xml") root = xml.getroot() c = root.findall('ns:child')

What do I need to do for this to work? I cannot change the file, but I could change the xml object after loading.

I read the relevant lxml documentation, searched and tried all kinds of suggestions, but got none of them to work unfortunately. This does sound like a very common question...?

Lewis · Accepted Answer · 2025-03-05 10:22:33Z

You could map the ns prefix to your default namespace by creating a Python dictionary.

from lxml import etree xml = etree.parse("myfile.xml") root = xml.getroot() # a dictionary where the key "ns" is the prefix you want to use, and the value "somelongnamespace" is the namespace URI from your XML namespace = {"ns": "somelongnamespace"} children = root.findall('ns:child', namespaces=namespace) if children: print("Found children:") for child in children: print(f"{etree.tostring(child, encoding='unicode').strip()}") else: print("No children found.")

If you need to perform many operations on the XML, you can create a class that encapsulates the namespace and provides methods for querying the XML.

class XmlNamespaceHandler: def __init__(self, xml_file, namespace): self.xml = etree.parse(xml_file) self.root = self.xml.getroot() self.nsmap = {'ns': namespace} def findall(self, xpath): return self.root.findall(xpath, namespaces=self.nsmap) xml_handler = XmlNamespaceHandler("myfile.xml", "somelongnamespace") children = xml_handler.findall('ns:child')

Sure. But is there no way around having to pass namespaces=mynamespaces every time? :-(
@MicheldeRuiter I added an alternative where the namespace and XML data are encapsulated within a class.

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