Question

Dive into Python: Scripts and Streams –

class KantGenerator:
    def _load(self, source):
        sock = toolbox.openAnything(source)
        xmldoc = minidom.parse(sock).documentElement
        sock.close()
        return xmldoc

I am curious, why do we have documentElement attribute when –

xmldoc = minidom.parse(sock)

would have given me the same thing as well? (seems both refer to the current instance)

A pydoc query is not giving me much clue either.

$ pydoc xml.dom.minidom.Document.documentElement
xml.dom.minidom.Document.documentElement
    Top-level element of this document.

Answer 1

The minidom.Document is a xml.dom.Document object, while minidom.Document.documentElement is an xml.dom.Element object.

The Document contains extra things, like encoding, where the Element contains the actual XML data.

There can only be one Element in the main document (hence documentElement), where an element can have many children of other elements.

They both share many methods (both are derived from xml.dom.Node), so in many cases they can be interchangeable.