Hello Mike,

I realize minidom is a pure python library, but I wonder if elementtree
isn't "preferred" here since you're already using lxml?

I think the latter must be based on the former.

Or for a bit of a snark, try, e.g.
http://blog.ianbicking.org/2008/03/30/python-html-parser-performance/ ..
Bicking: "I don't recommend using minidom for anything."


--
Al Matthews

Software Developer, Digital Services Unit
Atlanta University Center, Robert W. Woodruff Library
email: [log in to unmask]; office: 1 404 978 2057





On 3/7/13 10:49 AM, "Michael Beccaria" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>I ended up doing a regular expression find and replace function to
>replace all illegal xml characters with a dash or something. I was more
>disappointed in the fact that on the xml creation end, minidom was able
>to create non-compliant xml files. I assumed that if minidom could make
>it, it would be compliant but that doesn't seem to be the case. Now I
>have to add a find and replace function on the creation side to avoid
>this issue in the future. Good learning experience I guess. Thanks for
>all your suggestions.
>
>Mike Beccaria
>Systems Librarian
>Head of Digital Initiative
>Paul Smith's College
>518.327.6376
>[log in to unmask]
>Become a friend of Paul Smith's Library on Facebook today!
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>Chris Beer
>Sent: Tuesday, March 05, 2013 1:48 PM
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] XML Parsing and Python
>
>I'll note that 0xFFFF is a UTF-8 non-character, and " these noncharacters
>should never be included in text interchange between implementations."
>[1] I assume the OCR engine maybe using 0xFFFF when it can't recognize a
>character? So, it's not wrong for a parser to complain (or, not complain)
>about 0xFFFF, and you can just scrub the string like Jon suggests.
>
>Chris
>
>
>[1]
>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mapping_of_Unicode_characters#Noncharacters
>
>On 5 Mar, 2013, at 9:16 , Jon Stroop <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> Mike,
>> I haven't used minidom extensively but my guess is that
>>doc.toprettyxml(indent=" ",encoding="utf-8") isn't actually changing the
>>encoding because it can't parse the string in your content variable. I'm
>>surprised that you're not getting tossed a UnicodeError, but The docs
>>for Node.toxml() [1] might shed some light:
>>
>>> To avoid UnicodeError exceptions in case of unrepresentable text data,
>>>the encoding argument should be specified as "utf-8".
>>
>> So what happens if you're not explicit about the encoding, i.e. just
>>doc.toprettyxml()? This would hopefully at least move your exception to
>>a more appropriate place.
>>
>> In any case, one solution would be to scrub the string in your content
>>variable to get rid of the invalid characters (hopefully they're
>>insignificant). Maybe something like this:
>>
>> def unicode_filter(char):
>>    try:
>>        unicode(char, encoding='utf-8', errors='strict')
>>        return char
>>    except UnicodeDecodeError:
>>        return ''
>>
>> content = 'abc\xFF'
>> content = ''.join(map(unicode_filter, content)) print content
>>
>> Not really my area of expertise, but maybe worth a shot....
>> -Jon
>>
>> 1.
>> http://docs.python.org/2/library/xml.dom.minidom.html#xml.dom.minidom.
>> Node.toxml
>>
>> --
>> Jon Stroop
>> Digital Initiatives Programmer/Analyst Princeton University Library
>> [log in to unmask]
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 03/04/2013 03:00 PM, Michael Beccaria wrote:
>>> I'm working on a project that takes the ocr data found in a pdf and
>>>places it in a custom xml file.
>>>
>>> I use Python scripts to create the xml file. Something like this
>>>(trimmed down a bit):
>>>
>>> from xml.dom.minidom import Document
>>> doc = Document()
>>>      Page = doc.createElement("Page")
>>>      doc.appendChild(Page)
>>>      f = StringIO(txt)
>>>      lines = f.readlines()
>>>      for line in lines:
>>>      word = doc.createElement("String")
>>>              ...
>>>              word.setAttribute("CONTENT",content)
>>>              Page.appendChild(word)
>>>      return doc.toprettyxml(indent="  ",encoding="utf-8")
>>>
>>>
>>> This creates a file, simply, that looks like this:
>>> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <Page HEIGHT="3296"
>>> WIDTH="2609">
>>>   <String CONTENT="BuffaloLaunch" />
>>>   <String CONTENT="Club" />
>>>   <String CONTENT="Offices" />
>>>   <String CONTENT="Installed" />
>>>   ...
>>> </Page>
>>>
>>> I am able to get this document to be created ok and saved to an xml
>>>file. The problem occurs when I try and have it read using the lxml
>>>library:
>>>
>>> from lxml import etree
>>> doc = etree.parse(filename)
>>>
>>>
>>> I am running across errors like "XMLSyntaxError: Char 0xFFFF out of
>>>allowed range, line 94, column 19". Which when I look at the file, is
>>>true. There is a 0XFFFF character in the content field.
>>>
>>> How is a file able to be created using minidom (which I assume would
>>>create a valid xml file) and then failing when parsing with lxml? What
>>>should I do to fix this on the encoding side so that errors don't show
>>>up on the parsing side?
>>> Thanks,
>>> Mike
>>>
>>> How is the
>>> Mike Beccaria
>>> Systems Librarian
>>> Head of Digital Initiative
>>> Paul Smith's College
>>> 518.327.6376
>>> [log in to unmask]
>>> Become a friend of Paul Smith's Library on Facebook today!


-----------------------------------------
**************************************************************************************************
The contents of this email and any attachments are confidential.
They are intended for the named recipient(s) only.
If you have received this email in error please notify the system
manager or  the 
sender immediately and do not disclose the contents to anyone or
make copies.

** IronMail scanned this email for viruses, vandals and malicious
content. **
**************************************************************************************************