Mastering lxml in Python: Parse XML and HTML Like a Pro

Introduction XML and HTML are everywhere—from APIs to scraped websites. In this post, I’ll show you how to use lxml, a powerful and fast Python library for parsing and manipulating XML/HTML. Installation pip install lxml Parsing XML from lxml import etree xml_data = '''OneTwo''' root = etree.fromstring(xml_data) for item in root.findall('item'): print(item.text) Parsing HTML from lxml import html html_content = 'Hello' tree = html.fromstring(html_content) heading = tree.xpath('//h1/text()') print(heading[0]) # Output: Hello XPath Basics Explain how XPath is used to select nodes: links = tree.xpath('//a/@href') Error Handling & Best Practices Use try/except Validate structure before parsing Real-world Use Cases Scraping Working with config files Parsing API responses Conclusion lxml gives you superpowers for XML and HTML parsing. Whether you're a beginner or advanced dev, it’s worth mastering!

Apr 5, 2025 - 07:52

Mastering lxml in Python: Parse XML and HTML Like a Pro

Introduction

XML and HTML are everywhere—from APIs to scraped websites. In this post, I’ll show you how to use lxml, a powerful and fast Python library for parsing and manipulating XML/HTML.

Installation

pip install lxml

Parsing XML

from lxml import etree

xml_data = '''OneTwo'''
root = etree.fromstring(xml_data)

for item in root.findall('item'):
    print(item.text)

Parsing HTML

from lxml import html

html_content = 'Hello'
tree = html.fromstring(html_content)

heading = tree.xpath('//h1/text()')
print(heading[0])  # Output: Hello