pygixml

pygixml

A high-performance XML parser for Python based on Cython and pugixml, providing fast XML parsing, manipulation, XPath queries, text extraction, and advanced XML processing capabilities.

📚 View Full Documentation

🚀 Performance

pygixml delivers exceptional performance compared to other XML libraries:

Performance Comparison (5000 XML elements)

Library	Parsing Time	Speedup vs ElementTree
pygixml	0.00077s	15.9x faster
lxml	0.00407s	3.0x faster
ElementTree	0.01220s	1.0x (baseline)

Key Performance Highlights

• 15.9x faster than Python's ElementTree for XML parsing
• 5.3x faster than lxml for XML parsing
• Memory efficient - uses pugixml's optimized C++ memory management
• Scalable performance - maintains speed advantage across different XML sizes

Installation

From PyPI

pip install pygixml

From GitHub

pip install git+https://github.com/MohammadRaziei/pygixml.git

Supported XPath Features

• Node selection: //book, /library/book, book[1]
• Attribute selection: book[@id], book[@category='fiction']
• Boolean operations: and, or, not()
• Comparison operators: =, !=, <, >, <=, >=
• Mathematical operations: +, -, *, div, mod
• Functions: position(), last(), count(), sum(), string(), number()
• Axes: child::, attribute::, descendant::, ancestor::
• Wildcards: *, @*, node()

API Overview

Core Classes

• XMLDocument: Create, parse, save XML documents
• XMLNode: Navigate and manipulate XML nodes
• XMLAttribute: Handle XML attributes
• XPathQuery: Compile and execute XPath queries
• XPathNode: Result of XPath queries (wraps nodes and attributes)
• XPathNodeSet: Collection of XPath results

Key Methods

XMLDocument Methods

• parse_string(xml_string) - Parse XML from string
• parse_file(file_path) - Parse XML from file
• save_file(file_path) - Save XML to file
• append_child(name) - Add child node
• first_child() - Get first child node
• child(name) - Get child by name
• reset() - Clear document

XMLNode Methods

• name - Get/set node name
• value - Get/set node value (for text nodes only)
• child_value(name) - Get text content of child node
• append_child(name) - Add child node
• first_child() - Get first child
• child(name) - Get child by name
• next_sibling - Get next sibling
• previous_sibling - Get previous sibling
• parent - Get parent node
• text(recursive, join) - Get text content
• to_string(indent) - Serialize to XML string
• xml - XML representation property
• xpath - Absolute XPath of node
• is_null() - Check if node is null
• mem_id - Memory identifier for debugging

XPath Methods

• select_nodes(query) - Select multiple nodes using XPath
• select_node(query) - Select single node using XPath
• XPathQuery(query) - Create reusable XPath query object
• evaluate_node_set(context) - Evaluate query and return node set
• evaluate_node(context) - Evaluate query and return first node
• evaluate_boolean(context) - Evaluate query and return boolean
• evaluate_number(context) - Evaluate query and return number
• evaluate_string(context) - Evaluate query and return string

Quick Start

import pygixml

# Parse XML from string
xml_string = """
<library>
    <book id="1">
        <title>The Great Gatsby</title>
        <author>F. Scott Fitzgerald</author>
        <year>1925</year>
    </book>
</library>
"""

doc = pygixml.parse_string(xml_string)
root = doc.first_child()

# Access elements
book = root.first_child()
title = book.child("title")
print(f"Title: {title.child_value()}")  # Output: Title: The Great Gatsby

# Create new XML
doc = pygixml.XMLDocument()
root = doc.append_child("catalog")
product = root.append_child("product")
product.name = "product"

# To add text content to an element, append a text node
text_node = product.append_child("")  # Empty name creates text node
text_node.value = "content"

Advanced Features

Text Content Extraction

import pygixml

xml_string = """
<root>
    <simple>Hello World</simple>
    <nested>
        <child>Child Text</child>
        More text
    </nested>
    <mixed>Text <b>with</b> mixed <i>content</i></mixed>
</root>
"""

doc = pygixml.parse_string(xml_string)
root = doc.first_child()

# Get direct text content
simple = root.child("simple")
print(simple.child_value())  # "Hello World"

# Get recursive text content
nested = root.child("nested")
print(nested.text(recursive=True))  # "Child Text\nMore text"

# Get direct text only (non-recursive)
mixed = root.child("mixed") 
print(mixed.text(recursive=False))  # "Text "

# Custom join character
print(nested.text(recursive=True, join=" | "))  # "Child Text | More text"

XML Serialization

import pygixml

doc = pygixml.XMLDocument()
root = doc.append_child("root")
child = root.append_child("item")
child.name = "product"

# Serialize to string
print(root.to_string())  # <root>\n  <product/>\n</root>
print(root.to_string("    "))  # Custom indentation

# Convenience property
print(root.xml)  # Same as to_string() with default indent

Node Iteration

import pygixml

xml_string = """
<root>
    <item>First</item>
    <item>Second</item>
    <item>Third</item>
</root>
"""

doc = pygixml.parse_string(xml_string)

# Iterate over document (depth-first)
for node in doc:
    print(f"Node: {node.name}, XPath: {node.xpath}")

# Iterate over children
root = doc.first_child()
for child in root:
    print(f"Child: {child.name}, Value: {child.child_value()}")

Node Comparison and Identity

import pygixml

doc = pygixml.parse_string("<root><a/><b/></root>")
root = doc.first_child()
a = root.child("a")
b = root.child("b")
a2 = root.child("a")

print(a == a2)  # True - same node
print(a == b)   # False - different nodes
print(a.mem_id) # Memory address for debugging

XPath Support

pygixml provides full XPath 1.0 support through pugixml's powerful XPath engine:

import pygixml

xml_string = """
<library>
    <book id="1" category="fiction">
        <title>The Great Gatsby</title>
        <author>F. Scott Fitzgerald</author>
        <year>1925</year>
        <price>12.99</price>
    </book>
    <book id="2" category="fiction">
        <title>1984</title>
        <author>George Orwell</author>
        <year>1949</year>
        <price>10.99</price>
    </book>
</library>
"""

doc = pygixml.parse_string(xml_string)
root = doc.first_child()

# Select all books
books = root.select_nodes("book")
print(f"Found {len(books)} books")

# Select fiction books
fiction_books = root.select_nodes("book[@category='fiction']")
print(f"Found {len(fiction_books)} fiction books")

# Select specific book by ID
book_2 = root.select_node("book[@id='2']")
if book_2:
    title = book_2.node.child("title").child_value()
    print(f"Book ID 2: {title}")

# Use XPathQuery for repeated queries
query = pygixml.XPathQuery("book[year > 1930]")
recent_books = query.evaluate_node_set(root)
print(f"Found {len(recent_books)} books published after 1930")

# XPath boolean evaluation
has_orwell = pygixml.XPathQuery("book[author='George Orwell']").evaluate_boolean(root)
print(f"Has George Orwell books: {has_orwell}")

# XPath number evaluation
avg_price = pygixml.XPathQuery("sum(book/price) div count(book)").evaluate_number(root)
print(f"Average price: ${avg_price:.2f}")

Important Note: Element Nodes vs Text Nodes

In pugixml (and therefore pygixml), element nodes do not have values directly. Instead, they contain child text nodes that hold the text content.

# ❌ This will NOT work (element nodes don't have values):
element_node.value = "some text"

# ✅ Correct approach - use child_value() to get text content:
text_content = element_node.child_value()

# ✅ To set text content, you need to append a text node:
text_node = element_node.append_child("")  # Empty name creates text node
text_node.value = "some text"

Benchmarks

Run performance comparisons:

# Run complete benchmark suite
python benchmarks/clean_visualization.py

# View results
cat benchmarks/results/benchmark_results.csv

The benchmark suite compares pygixml against:

• lxml - Industry-standard C-based parser
• xml.etree.ElementTree - Python standard library

Benchmark Files:

• benchmarks/clean_visualization.py - Main benchmark runner
• benchmarks/benchmark_parsing.py - Core benchmark logic
• benchmarks/results/ - Generated CSV data and SVG charts

Documentation

📖 Full documentation is available at: https://mohammadraziei.github.io/pygixml/

The documentation includes:

• Complete API reference with examples
• Installation guides for all platforms
• Performance benchmarks and optimization tips
• XPath 1.0 usage guide with comprehensive examples
• Real-world usage scenarios

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.

To use this library, you must star the project on GitHub!

This helps support the development and shows appreciation for the work. Please star the repository before using the library:

👉 Star pygixml on GitHub

Acknowledgments

• pugixml - Fast and lightweight C++ XML processing library
• Cython - C extensions for Python
• scikit-build - Modern Python build system