problem parsing utf-8 encoded xml - minidom

[ashmir.d]

Hi,
I am trying to parse an xml file using the minidom parser.

<code>
from xml.dom import minidom
xmlfilename = "sample.xml "
xmldoc = minidom.parse(x mlfilename)
</code>

The parser is failing on this line:

<mrcb245-c>Heinrich Kèufner, Norbert Nedopil, Heinz Schèoch (Hrsg.).</
mrcb245-c>

This is the error message I get:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "readXML.py ", line 11, in <module>
xmldoc = minidom.parse(x mlfilename)
File "C:\Python25\li b\xml\dom\minid om.py", line 1913, in parse
return expatbuilder.pa rse(file)
File "C:\Python25\li b\xml\dom\expat builder.py", line 924, in parse
result = builder.parseFi le(fp)
File "C:\Python25\li b\xml\dom\expat builder.py", line 207, in
parseFile
parser.Parse(bu ffer, 0)
xml.parsers.exp at.ExpatError: not well-formed (invalid token): line
2254, column 21

It seems to me that it is having an issue with the 'è' character. I
have even tried the following to make sure it recognises the file as
utf-8 file:

<code>
from xml.dom import minidom
import codecs

xmlfilename = "sample.xml "
xmlfile = codecs.open(xml filename,"r","u tf-8")
xmlstring = xmlfile.read()
xmldoc = minidom.parse(x mlfilename)
</code>

However, this doesn't work either and I get the following error
message:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "readXML.py ", line 9, in <module>
xmlstring = xmlfile.read()
File "C:\Python25\li b\codecs.py", line 618, in read
return self.reader.rea d(size)
File "C:\Python25\li b\codecs.py", line 424, in read
newchars, decodedbytes = self.decode(dat a, self.errors)
UnicodeDecodeEr ror: 'utf8' codec can't decode bytes in position
69343-69345: invalid data

I'm assuming here that it is failing at the same place...

Can someone please point me in the right direction?
Thanks,
Ashmir

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?=22Martin_v=2E_L=F6wis=22?=]

The parser is failing on this line:

>
<mrcb245-c>Heinrich Kèufner, Norbert Nedopil, Heinz Schèoch (Hrsg.).</
mrcb245-c>

If it is literally this line, it's no surprise: there must not be a line
break between the slash and the closing element name.

However, since you are getting the error in a different column, it's
indeed more likely that there is a problem with the encoding.

Given that the Python UTF-8 codec refuses the data, most likely, the
data is *not* encoded in UTF-8 (but perhaps in Latin-1). If so, you
need to prefix the XML document with a proper XML declaration, such
as

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

Alternatively, make sure that the file is really encoded in UTF-8.

Regards,
Martin

[ashmir.d]

On Jul 4, 2:36 pm, "Martin v. Löwis" <[e-mail] s.dewrote:

The parser is failing on this line:

<mrcb245-c>Heinrich Kèufner, Norbert Nedopil, Heinz Schèoch (Hrsg.)..</
mrcb245-c>

If it is literally this line, it's no surprise: there must not be a line
break between the slash and the closing element name.

However, since you are getting the error in a different column, it's
indeed more likely that there is a problem with the encoding.

Given that the Python UTF-8 codec refuses the data, most likely, the
data is *not* encoded in UTF-8 (but perhaps in Latin-1). If so, you
need to prefix the XML document with a proper XML declaration, such
as

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

Alternatively, make sure that the file is really encoded in UTF-8.

Regards,
Martin

There is no line break in the xml file. It was just a formatting issue
on this forum.

However, you were right about the encoding not being
utf-8. The xml file is autogenerated by a different script so that's
probably where it is going wrong.
The parser works fine if I change the first line to
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>

Thank you very much