:mod:`xml.sax` --- Support for SAX2 parsers
Source code: :source:`Lib/xml/sax/__init__.py`
The :mod:`xml.sax` package provides a number of modules which implement the Simple API for XML (SAX) interface for Python. The package itself provides the SAX exceptions and the convenience functions which will be most used by users of the SAX API.
Warning
The :mod:`xml.sax` module is not secure against maliciously constructed data. If you need to parse untrusted or unauthenticated data see :ref:`xml-vulnerabilities`.
The convenience functions are:
A typical SAX application uses three kinds of objects: readers, handlers and input sources. "Reader" in this context is another term for parser, i.e. some piece of code that reads the bytes or characters from the input source, and produces a sequence of events. The events then get distributed to the handler objects, i.e. the reader invokes a method on the handler. A SAX application must therefore obtain a reader object, create or open the input sources, create the handlers, and connect these objects all together. As the final step of preparation, the reader is called to parse the input. During parsing, methods on the handler objects are called based on structural and syntactic events from the input data.
For these objects, only the interfaces are relevant; they are normally not instantiated by the application itself. Since Python does not have an explicit notion of interface, they are formally introduced as classes, but applications may use implementations which do not inherit from the provided classes. The :class:`~xml.sax.xmlreader.InputSource`, :class:`~xml.sax.xmlreader.Locator`, :class:`~xml.sax.xmlreader.Attributes`, :class:`~xml.sax.xmlreader.AttributesNS`, and :class:`~xml.sax.xmlreader.XMLReader` interfaces are defined in the module :mod:`xml.sax.xmlreader`. The handler interfaces are defined in :mod:`xml.sax.handler`. For convenience, :class:`~xml.sax.xmlreader.InputSource` (which is often instantiated directly) and the handler classes are also available from :mod:`xml.sax`. These interfaces are described below.
In addition to these classes, :mod:`xml.sax` provides the following exception classes.
SAXException Objects
The :class:`SAXException` exception class supports the following methods: