pythonparsinglxml

Get all text inside a tag in lxml


I'd like to write a code snippet that would grab all of the text inside the <content> tag, in lxml, in all three instances below, including the code tags. I've tried tostring(getchildren()) but that would miss the text in between the tags. I didn't have very much luck searching the API for a relevant function. Could you help me out?

<!--1-->
<content>
<div>Text inside tag</div>
</content>
#should return "<div>Text inside tag</div>

<!--2-->
<content>
Text with no tag
</content>
#should return "Text with no tag"


<!--3-->
<content>
Text outside tag <div>Text inside tag</div>
</content>
#should return "Text outside tag <div>Text inside tag</div>"

Solution

  • Try:

    def stringify_children(node):
        from lxml.etree import tostring
        from itertools import chain
        parts = ([node.text] +
                list(chain(*([c.text, tostring(c), c.tail] for c in node.getchildren()))) +
                [node.tail])
        # filter removes possible Nones in texts and tails
        return ''.join(filter(None, parts))
    

    Example:

    from lxml import etree
    node = etree.fromstring("""<content>
    Text outside tag <div>Text <em>inside</em> tag</div>
    </content>""")
    stringify_children(node)
    

    Produces: '\nText outside tag <div>Text <em>inside</em> tag</div>\n'