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!
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