How to display HTML using LXML in Python

Question

So what I am trying to achieve is really simple.

I want to call python test.py and would like to go to my local host and see the html result. However I keep getting an error ValueError: Invalid tag name u'<html><body><h1>Test!</h1></body></html>'

Below is my code. What's the problem here?

import lxml.etree as ETO
html = ETO.Element("<html><body><h1>Test!</h1></body></html>")
self.wfile.write(ETO.tostring(html, xml_declaration=False, pretty_print=True))

Are you trying to read an existing file or create a new one? — Jack Fleeting
– Jack Fleeting, Commented May 8, 2020 at 21:50
lxml is not a web server. This looks similar to another question of yours: stackoverflow.com/q/61683853/407651 — mzjn
– mzjn, Commented May 9, 2020 at 4:45

RGoodman · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-08 19:26:59Z

0

You have to create each element in turn, and put them in the structure that you want them to have:

html = ETO.Element('html')
body = ETO.SubElement(html, 'body')
h1 = ETO.SubElement(body, 'h1')
h1.text = 'Test!'

Then ETO.tostring(html) will return a bytestring that looks like this:

>>> ETO.tostring(html)
b'<html><body><h1>Test!</h1></body></html>'

answered May 8, 2020 at 19:26

RGoodman

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3 Comments

Yuri Burkov Over a year ago

Thank you for your answer! I've dont it before but I realize it's just too much for big files. I want to read the html file within python without creating each element in turn. How do I do that?

RGoodman Over a year ago

If you already have an HTML file, why are you recreating it? I guess I don't understand the problem you're trying to solve.

Yuri Burkov Over a year ago

The python file itself has other functionalities that would be faster in production time if I can just start the server and show my html file in the python code itself. I was wondering if there is any way how to do it.

Jack Fleeting · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-09 12:52:06Z

0

Since you are reading an existing file, Element isn't useful here; try changing this

html = ETO.Element("<html><body><h1>Test!</h1></body></html>")

to this

html = ETO.fromstring("<html><body><h1>Test!</h1></body></html>")

and see if it works for you.

answered May 9, 2020 at 12:52

Jack Fleeting

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