This is a patch that fixes bug 1371937, along with a test case that reproduces the original problem.

The patch is a port of the algorithm described here pretty much verbatim:
http://www.w3.org/TR/DOM-Level-3-Core/namespaces-algorithms.html#normalizeDocumentAlgo

to resolve namespace declarations. The patch also calls the normalizeNamespace method before calling writexml

Note the patch is against minidom that comes with python 2.5, NOT WITH PYXML. I need this for an embedded project where pyxml is too big.

File Added: normalizeNamespace.diff

File Added: normalizeNamespace.diff

File Added: test_toxml.py

Thanks for the patch.

I think this is probably *not* desirable in this form.  As a side effect of writexml(), this fixes up tagNames and attributes of elements in the document.  DOM Level 3 Load and Save made the opposite decision:  "The XML data is written to a string or an output stream. Any changes or fixups made during the serialization affect only the serialized data. The Document object and its children are never altered by the serialization operation."  -- http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-DOM-Level-3-LS-20040407/load-save.html#LS-LSSerializer (first paragraph)  I think that is the right approach.

The new method Element.normalizeNamespace() isn't really a DOM method, though the appendix sort of makes it look that way.

Incomplete - no doc patch.  (I think there's also a bug in the line added to Document.writexml()-- can't Documents have children that aren't Elements?)

Patch has tests, fixes issue 1371937.

msg51609 doesn't seem too enthusiastic about the patch.  msg84599 states unit tests are provided and #1371937 is fixed.  Can we have a definitive statement as to whether the patch is acceptable or not.