Python XML Parsing without root

ElementTree.fromstringlist accepts an iterable (that yields strings).

Using it with itertools.chain:

import itertoolsimport xml.etree.ElementTree as ET# import xml.etree.cElementTree as ETwith open('xml-like-file.xml') as f:    it = itertools.chain('<root>', f, '</root>')    root = ET.fromstringlist(it)# Do something with `root`root.find('.//tag3')

How about instead of editing the file do something like this

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ETwith file("xml-file.xml") as f:    xml_object = ET.fromstringlist(["<root>", f.read(), "</root>"])

lxml.html can parse fragments:

from lxml import htmls = """<tag1> <tag2> </tag2></tag1><tag1> <tag3/></tag1>"""doc = html.fromstring(s)for thing in doc:    print thing    for other in thing:        print other""">>> <Element tag1 at 0x3411a80><Element tag2 at 0x3428990><Element tag1 at 0x3428930><Element tag3 at 0x3411a80>>>>"""

Courtesy this SO answer

And if there is more than one level of nesting:

def flatten(nested):    """recusively flatten nested elements    yields individual elements    """    for thing in nested:        yield thing        for other in flatten(thing):            yield otherdoc = html.fromstring(s)for thing in flatten(doc):    print thing

Similarly, lxml.etree.HTML will parse this. It adds html and body tags:

d = etree.HTML(s)for thing in d.iter():    print thing""" <Element html at 0x3233198><Element body at 0x322fcb0><Element tag1 at 0x3233260><Element tag2 at 0x32332b0><Element tag1 at 0x322fcb0><Element tag3 at 0x3233148>"""