I have pretty big XML documents, so I don't want to use DOM, but while parsing a document with SAX parser I want to stop at some point (let's say when I reached element with a certain name) and get everything inside that element as a string. "Everything" inside is not necessary a text node, it may contain tags, but I don't want them to me parsed, I just want to get them as text.
I'm writing in Python. Is it possible to solve? Thanks!
It does not seem to be offered by the xml.sax API, but you can utilize another way of interrupting control flow: exceptions.
Just define a custom exception for that purpose:
class FinishedParsing(Exception):
pass
Raise this exception in your handler when you have finished parsing and simply ignore it.
try:
parser.parse(xml)
except FinishedParsing:
pass