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Author waveform
Recipients waveform
Date 2008-05-03.15:12:21
SpamBayes Score 0.00027452593
Marked as misclassified No
Message-id <1209827546.16.0.534568490293.issue2746@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
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In the ElementTree and cElementTree implementations in Python 2.5 (and 
possibly Python 2.6 as I also found this issue when testing an SVN 
checkout of ElementTree 1.3), the conversion of a ProcessingInstruction 
to a string converts XML reserved characters (<, >, &) to character 
entities:

>>> from xml.etree.ElementTree import *
>>> tostring(ProcessingInstruction('test', '<testing&>'))
'<?test &lt;testing&amp;&gt;?>'

>>> from xml.etree.cElementTree import *
>>> tostring(ProcessingInstruction('test', '<testing&>'))
'<?test &lt;testing&amp;&gt;?>'

The XML 1.0 spec is rather vague on whether character entities are 
permitted in PIs (it explicitly states parameter entities are not 
parsed in PIs, but says nothing about parsing character entities). 
However, it does have this to say in section 2.4 "Character Data and 
Markup":

"The ampersand character (&) and the left angle bracket (<) MUST NOT 
appear in their literal form, except when used as markup delimiters, or 
within a comment, a processing instruction, or a CDATA section."

So, XML reserved chars don't need converting in PIs (the only string 
not permitted in a PI's content according to the spec, section 2.6, is 
'?>'), which sort of implies that they shouldn't be. As for practical 
reasons why they shouldn't be:

Breaks generated PHP:

>>> from xml.etree.cElementTree import *
>>> doc = Element('html')
>>> SubElement(doc, 'head')
<Element 'head' at 0x2af4e3b8a9f0>
>>> SubElement(doc, 'body')
<Element 'body' at 0x2af4e3b922a0>
>>> doc[1].append(ProcessingInstruction('php', 'if (2 < 1) print 
"<p>Something has gone horribly wrong!</p>";'))
>>> tostring(doc)
'<html><head /><body><?php if (2 &lt; 1) print "&lt;p&gt;Something has 
gone horribly wrong!&lt;/p&gt;";?></body></html>'

Different from xml.dom:

>>> from xml.dom.minidom import *
>>> i = getDOMImplementation()
>>> doc = i.createDocument(None, 'html', None)
>>> doc.documentElement.appendChild(doc.createElement('head'))
<DOM Element: head at 0x8c6170>
>>> doc.documentElement.appendChild(doc.createElement('body'))
<DOM Element: body at 0x8c6290>
>>> 
doc.documentElement.lastChild.appendChild(doc.createProcessingInstruction('test',
 '<testing&>'))
<xml.dom.minidom.ProcessingInstruction instance at 0x8c63b0>
>>> doc.toxml()
'<?xml version="1.0" ?>\n<html><head/><body><?test <testing&>?></body></
html>'

Different from lxml:

>>> from lxml.etree import *
>>> tostring(ProcessingInstruction('test', '<testing&>'))
'<?test <testing&>?>'

I suspect the only change necessary to fix this is to replace the 
_escape_cdata() call for ProcessingInstruction (and possibly Comment 
too given the spec quote above) in ElementTree._write() with an 
_encode() call, as shown in this patch (which includes the Comment 
change as well):

Index: elementtree/ElementTree.py
===================================================================
--- elementtree/ElementTree.py  (revision 511)
+++ elementtree/ElementTree.py  (working copy)
@@ -663,9 +663,9 @@
         # write XML to file
         tag = node.tag
         if tag is Comment:
-            file.write("<!-- %s -->" % _escape_cdata(node.text, 
encoding))
+            file.write("<!-- %s -->" % _encode(node.text, encoding))
         elif tag is ProcessingInstruction:
-            file.write("<?%s?>" % _escape_cdata(node.text, encoding))
+            file.write("<?%s?>" % _encode(node.text, encoding))
         else:
             items = node.items()
             xmlns_items = [] # new namespaces in this scope

Sorry I haven't got a similar patch for cElementTree. I've had a quick 
look through the source, but haven't yet figured out where the change 
should be made (unless it's not required - does cElementTree reuse that 
bit of ElementTree?).
History
Date User Action Args
2008-05-03 15:12:26waveformsetspambayes_score: 0.000274526 -> 0.00027452593
recipients: + waveform
2008-05-03 15:12:26waveformsetspambayes_score: 0.000274526 -> 0.000274526
messageid: <1209827546.16.0.534568490293.issue2746@psf.upfronthosting.co.za>
2008-05-03 15:12:24waveformlinkissue2746 messages
2008-05-03 15:12:21waveformcreate