gh-156765: Fix inaccuracies in the ElementTree documentation - #156766
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serhiy-storchaka merged 4 commits intoSep 2, 2026
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The parser argument of iterparse() is an instance of XMLParser or its subclass, not a subclass. feed() accepts a string as well as encoded data. Bytes are no longer said to be supported for the element tag, the attribute names and values and the text of a comment: they are either rejected by the serializer or written as a repr.
serhiy-storchaka
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needs backport to 3.13
Documentation build overview
4 files changed± library/functions.html± library/xml.etree.elementtree.html± whatsnew/3.16.html± whatsnew/changelog.html |
They do not return a list in the Python implementation, which returns dict views. And the attributes are no longer returned in an arbitrary order: the attrib dict preserves the insertion order.
They are strings or QName instances, and the text and the tail can also be None. The element name can also be Comment, ProcessingInstruction or None, and the attribute value can be None for the HTML method.
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Thanks @serhiy-storchaka for the PR 🌮🎉.. I'm working now to backport this PR to: 3.13, 3.14, 3.15. |
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Sorry, @serhiy-storchaka, I could not cleanly backport this to |
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GH-156848 is a backport of this pull request to the 3.15 branch. |
bedevere-app
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needs backport to 3.15
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Sorry, @serhiy-storchaka, I could not cleanly backport this to |
This was referenced Sep 2, 2026
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GH-156849 is a backport of this pull request to the 3.14 branch. |
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GH-156850 is a backport of this pull request to the 3.13 branch. |
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Sep 2, 2026
…H-156766) (GH-156850) Corrected: * the parser argument of iterparse() is an instance of XMLParser or its subclass, not a subclass; * feed() accepts a string as well as encoded data; * keys() and items() do not return a list in the Python implementation, and the attributes are no longer returned in an arbitrary order. Removed the claims that the element tag, the attribute names and values, the text of a comment and the data of TreeBuilder.data() can be bytes. It is a Python 2 leftover. Documented instead what they can be. (cherry picked from commit 09ff4d4)
serhiy-storchaka
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Sep 2, 2026
…H-156766) (GH-156849) Corrected: * the parser argument of iterparse() is an instance of XMLParser or its subclass, not a subclass; * feed() accepts a string as well as encoded data; * keys() and items() do not return a list in the Python implementation, and the attributes are no longer returned in an arbitrary order. Removed the claims that the element tag, the attribute names and values, the text of a comment and the data of TreeBuilder.data() can be bytes. It is a Python 2 leftover. Documented instead what they can be. (cherry picked from commit 09ff4d4)
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Several statements in the documentation of
xml.etree.ElementTreedo not match the behaviour:iterparse()is an instance ofXMLParseror its subclass, not a subclass;XMLParser.feed()andXMLPullParser.feed()accept a string as well as encoded data;TreeBuilder.data()were said to be either bytestrings or Unicode strings, which is a Python 2 leftover: bytes are either rejected by the serializer or written as a repr.The claims about bytes are removed rather than corrected, because the accurate description is more complicated: a tag can also be
None(a fragment) or a factory likeComment, and an attribute value can be aQNameor, for the HTML method,None.