Question

Hi, presently I am using xml.sax.handler to parse xml files.

Below is my file.xml code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<sturp>
  <gear>
   <UL>
   <LI><I>Free Private Housing or a Generous Housing Allowance</I></LI>
   <LI><I>$50K in Free Life Insurance coverage</I></LI>
   </UL>
   <P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><FONT size="3"><SPAN style="FONT-FAMILY: Symbol; COLOR: black; mso-ascii-font-family: 'Times New Roman'">�</SPAN><SPAN style="COLOR: black"><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes">&nbsp; </SPAN>Position will manage 24 ED Rooms with 24/7 accountability<o:p></o:p></FONT></SPAN></FONT></P>
   <DIV>&nbsp;</DIV>
  </gear> 
</sturp>

below is my code

xmlFilePath = 'user/documents/file.xml'

try:
    parser = xml.sax.make_parser( )
    handler = FeedHandler( conn, clientSiteId, clientId, documentElementName, jobElementName )
    handler.setMapping( mapping )
    parser.setContentHandler(handler)
    parser.setEntityResolver(handler)

    parser.parse(open(xmlFilePath))

except (xml.sax.SAXParseException), e:
        print "*** PARSER error: %s" % e

output:

*** PARSER error: user/documents/file.xml:8:150: not well-formed <invalid token>
*** PARSER error: user/documents/file.xml:9:1: not well-formed <invalid token>

Actually the source xml file given to me is not in valid xml format, but i need to parse it.
How to ignore   and � from the xml file (also should escape all the errors and non valid xml tokens) before feeding it to the parser in the above code.

Thanks in advance……..

Answer 1

If you’re simply looking to replace &[a-z]+; entities from your input, you could use my hacked up solution below. But note, you should still give the parser a valid xml file, if you want it to work correctly.

import os, re

For the parser:

def ignore_open( p ):
  temf = 'temp_file'
  with open(temf,'wt') as temp:
    o = open(p,'r')
    temp.write(re.sub("\&[^\;]+;",'', o.read()))
  rs = open(temf)
  os.unlink(temf)
  return rs

Result

>>> parser.parse(ignore_open(xmlFilePath))

Untested code.