python sax error "junk after document element"

Question

I use python sax to parse xml file. The xml file is actually a combination of multiple xml files. It looks like as follows:

<row name="abc" age="40" body="blalalala..." creationdate="03/10/10" />
<row name="bcd" age="50" body="blalalala..." creationdate="03/10/09" />

My python code is in the following. It show "junk after document element" error. Any good idea to solve this problem. Thanks.

from xml.sax.handler import ContentHandler
from xml.sax import make_parser,SAXException
import sys

class PostHandler (ContentHandler):
    def __init__(self):
        self.find = 0
        self.buffer = ''
        self.mapping={}
    def startElement(self,name,attrs):
        if name == 'row':
             self.find = 1
             self.body = attrs["body"]
             print attrs["body"]
    def character(self,data):
        if self.find==1:
             self.buffer+=data
    def endElement(self,name):
        if self.find == 1:
             self.mapping[self.body] = self.buffer
             print self.mapping
parser = make_parser()
handler = PostHandler()
parser.setContentHandler(handler)
try:
    parser.parse(open("2.xml"))
except SAXException:

Dna

+1 I had this exact error, and this question helped me. Couldn't quite figure out the missing root element from the "junk after document element" error :D – Accusal

Answer 1

xmldata = '''
<row name="abc" age="40" body="blalalala..." creationdate="03/10/10" />
<row name="bcd" age="50" body="blalalala..." creationdate="03/10/09" />
'''

Add a wrapper tag around the data. I've used ElementTree since it's so simpler, but you'd be able to do the same on any parser:

from xml.etree import ElementTree as etree

# wrap the data
xmldata = '<rows>' +data + '</rows>'

rows = etree.fromstring(xmldata)
for row in rows:
    print row.attrib

Results in

{'age': '40',
 'body': 'blalalala...',
 'creationdate': '03/10/10',
 'name': 'abc'}
{'age': '50',
 'body': 'blalalala...',
 'creationdate': '03/10/09',
 'name': 'bcd'}

Yak

Answer 2

Seems that you do not have root element in your XML file. Wrap your row elements into single rows element.

Valle