Parsing API

All parsing APIs support both parsing from strings and directly from URLs (with built-in HTTP caching).

All *FromURL methods accept the following common HTTP parameters in addition to their specific ones:

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
url	str	(required)	URL to fetch.
values	dict	None	POST form data.
headers	dict	{}	Additional headers.
cacheTime	float	None	Cache time in seconds.
encoding	str	None	Character encoding.
errors	str	None	Error handling mode.
timeout	float	GLOBAL_DEFAULT_TIMEOUT	Timeout in seconds.
sleep	float	0	Post-request sleep time.
follow_redirects	bool	True	Follow redirects.
method	str	None	HTTP method override.

JSON

JSON parser.

ObjectFromString(string, encoding=None) → dict or list

Parses a JSON string.

ObjectFromURL(url, …) → dict or list

Fetches URL and parses as JSON. Accepts all common HTTP parameters.

StringFromObject(obj) → str

Converts an object to a JSON string.

XML

XML parser (powered by lxml).

Element(name, text=None, **kwargs) → _Element

Creates a new XML element.

StringFromElement(el, encoding=’utf8’) → str

Serializes an element to a string.

ElementFromString(string, encoding=None) → _Element

Parses XML string to an element.

ElementFromURL(url, …) → _Element

Fetches URL and parses as XML. Accepts all common HTTP parameters.

ObjectFromString(string) → ObjectifiedElement

Parses XML into an objectified element (lxml.objectify).

ObjectFromURL(url, …) → ObjectifiedElement

Fetches URL and objectifies XML. Accepts all common HTTP parameters.

StringFromObject(obj, encoding=’utf-8’) → str

Serializes objectified XML to string.

HTML

HTML parser (powered by lxml.html).

Element(name, text=None, **kwargs) → HtmlElement

Creates a new HTML element.

StringFromElement(el, encoding=’utf8’) → str

Serializes element to string.

ElementFromString(string) → HtmlElement

Parses HTML to element.

ElementFromURL(url, …) → HtmlElement

Fetches URL and parses as HTML. Accepts all common HTTP parameters.

Plist

Property List parser.

ObjectFromString(string) → dict or list

Parses a Plist string.

ObjectFromURL(url, …) → dict or list

Fetches URL and parses as Plist. Accepts all common HTTP parameters.

StringFromObject(obj) → str

Converts object to Plist string.

RSS

Feed parser (RSS / Atom / RDF).

FeedFromString(string) → feedparser dict

Parses a feed string.

FeedFromURL(url, …) → feedparser dict

Fetches URL and parses as feed. Accepts all common HTTP parameters.

YAML

YAML parser.

ObjectFromString(string) → object

Parses YAML string.

ObjectFromURL(url, …) → object

Fetches URL and parses as YAML. Accepts all common HTTP parameters.