How to get an XML DOM while offline?

[william tanksley]

I want to parse my iTunes Library xml. All was well, until I unplugged
and left for the train (where I get most of my personal projects
done). All of a sudden, I discovered that apparently the presence of a
DOCTYPE in the iTunes XML makes xml.dom.minidom insist on accessing
the Internet... So suddenly I was unable to do any work.

I don't want to modify the iTunes XML; iTunes rewrites it too often.
How can I prevent xml.dom.minidom from dying when it can't access the
Internet?

Is there a simpler way to read the iTunes XML? (It's merely a plist,
so the format is much simpler than general XML.)

-Wm

[william tanksley]

Re: How to get an XML DOM while offline?

"Diez B. Roggisch" <de...@nospam.w eb.dewrote:

The most pragmatic solution would be to rip the doctype out using simple
string methods and/or regexes.

Thank you, Diez and Paul; I took Diez's solution, and it works well
enough for me.

Diez

-Wm

[Stefan Behnel]

Re: How to get an XML DOM while offline?

william tanksley wrote:

I want to parse my iTunes Library xml. All was well, until I unplugged
and left for the train (where I get most of my personal projects
done). All of a sudden, I discovered that apparently the presence of a
DOCTYPE in the iTunes XML makes xml.dom.minidom insist on accessing
the Internet... So suddenly I was unable to do any work.
>
I don't want to modify the iTunes XML; iTunes rewrites it too often.
How can I prevent xml.dom.minidom from dying when it can't access the
Internet?
>
Is there a simpler way to read the iTunes XML? (It's merely a plist,
so the format is much simpler than general XML.)

Try lxml. Since version 2.0, its parsers will not access the network unless
you tell it to do so.

http://codespeak.net/lxml

It's also much easier to use than minidom and much faster:

http://blog.ianbicking.org/2008/03/30/python-html-parser-performance/

Stefan