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>"
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'