XML虽然比JSON复杂,在Web中应用也不如以前多了,不过仍有很多地方在用,所以,有必要了解如何操作XML。

DOM vs SAX

操作XML有两种方法:DOM和SAX。DOM会把整个XML读入内存,解析为树,因此占用内存大,解析慢,优点是可以任意遍历树的节点。SAX是流模式,边读边解析,占用内存小,解析快,缺点是我们需要自己处理事件。

正常情况下,优先考虑SAX,因为DOM实在太占内存。

在Python中使用SAX解析XML非常简洁,通常我们关心的事件是start_elementend_elementchar_data,准备好这3个函数,然后就可以解析xml了。

举个例子,当SAX解析器读到一个节点时:

<a href="/">python</a>

会产生3个事件:

  1. start_element事件,在读取<a href="/">时;

  2. char_data事件,在读取python时;

  3. end_element事件,在读取</a>时。

用代码实验一下:

from xml.parsers.expat import ParserCreate

class DefaultSaxHandler(object):
    def start_element(self, name, attrs):
        print('sax:start_element: %s, attrs: %s' % (name, str(attrs)))

    def end_element(self, name):
        print('sax:end_element: %s' % name)

    def char_data(self, text):
        print('sax:char_data: %s' % text)

xml = r'''<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ol>
    <li><a href="/python">Python</a></li>
    <li><a href="/ruby">Ruby</a></li>
</ol>
'''

handler = DefaultSaxHandler()
parser = ParserCreate()
parser.StartElementHandler = handler.start_element
parser.EndElementHandler = handler.end_element
parser.CharacterDataHandler = handler.char_data
parser.Parse(xml)

需要注意的是读取一大段字符串时,CharacterDataHandler可能被多次调用,所以需要自己保存起来,在EndElementHandler里面再合并。

除了解析XML外,如何生成XML呢?99%的情况下需要生成的XML结构都是非常简单的,因此,最简单也是最有效的生成XML的方法是拼接字符串:

L = []
L.append(r'<?xml version="1.0"?>')
L.append(r'<root>')
L.append(encode('some & data'))
L.append(r'</root>')
return ''.join(L)

如果要生成复杂的XML呢?建议你不要用XML,改成JSON。

小结

解析XML时,注意找出自己感兴趣的节点,响应事件时,把节点数据保存起来。解析完毕后,就可以处理数据。

练习

请利用SAX编写程序解析Yahoo的XML格式的天气预报,获取当天和第二天的天气:

http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss?u=c&w=2151330

参数w是城市代码,要查询某个城市代码,可以在weather.yahoo.com搜索城市,浏览器地址栏的URL就包含城市代码。

# -*- coding:utf-8 -*-

from xml.parsers.expat import ParserCreate
# 测试:
data = r'''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:yweather="http://xml.weather.yahoo.com/ns/rss/1.0" xmlns:geo="http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#">
    <channel>
        <title>Yahoo! Weather - Beijing, CN</title>
        <lastBuildDate>Wed, 27 May 2015 11:00 am CST</lastBuildDate>
        <yweather:location city="Beijing" region="" country="China"/>
        <yweather:units temperature="C" distance="km" pressure="mb" speed="km/h"/>
        <yweather:wind chill="28" direction="180" speed="14.48" />
        <yweather:atmosphere humidity="53" visibility="2.61" pressure="1006.1" rising="0" />
        <yweather:astronomy sunrise="4:51 am" sunset="7:32 pm"/>
        <item>
            <geo:lat>39.91</geo:lat>
            <geo:long>116.39</geo:long>
            <pubDate>Wed, 27 May 2015 11:00 am CST</pubDate>
            <yweather:condition text="Haze" code="21" temp="28" date="Wed, 27 May 2015 11:00 am CST" />
            <yweather:forecast day="Wed" date="27 May 2015" low="20" high="33" text="Partly Cloudy" code="30" />
            <yweather:forecast day="Thu" date="28 May 2015" low="21" high="34" text="Sunny" code="32" />
            <yweather:forecast day="Fri" date="29 May 2015" low="18" high="25" text="AM Showers" code="39" />
            <yweather:forecast day="Sat" date="30 May 2015" low="18" high="32" text="Sunny" code="32" />
            <yweather:forecast day="Sun" date="31 May 2015" low="20" high="37" text="Sunny" code="32" />
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>
'''
weather = parse_weather(data)
assert weather['city'] == 'Beijing', weather['city']
assert weather['country'] == 'China', weather['country']
assert weather['today']['text'] == 'Partly Cloudy', weather['today']['text']
assert weather['today']['low'] == 20, weather['today']['low']
assert weather['today']['high'] == 33, weather['today']['high']
assert weather['tomorrow']['text'] == 'Sunny', weather['tomorrow']['text']
assert weather['tomorrow']['low'] == 21, weather['tomorrow']['low']
assert weather['tomorrow']['high'] == 34, weather['tomorrow']['high']
print('Weather:', str(weather))