How to Handle Character Encoding Issues When Parsing XML with ElementTree in Python 3.10?
After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm stuck trying to I'm performance testing and I'm working on a project and hit a roadblock. This might be a silly question, but I'm currently working on parsing an XML file using Python's built-in `xml.etree.ElementTree` module, and I'm running into a character encoding scenario. The XML file includes special characters (like `&`, `<`, `>`, and non-ASCII characters) and is encoded in UTF-8. However, when I try to parse it, I receive the following behavior: ``` xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 24, column 13 ``` I've verified that the XML is valid and well-formed and that it indeed starts with the correct XML declaration: ```xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> ``` Here’s the code snippet I'm using to read the file: ```python import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET with open('data.xml', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as file: tree = ET.parse(file) root = tree.getroot() ``` I’ve tried opening the file in binary mode and decoding it like this: ```python with open('data.xml', 'rb') as file: contents = file.read().decode('utf-8') root = ET.fromstring(contents) ``` However, this approach leads to a different behavior: ``` xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseError: mismatched tag ``` After trying various ways to clean up the special characters, I’m still unable to proceed. What is the best way to ensure that I can properly parse this XML without running into character encoding issues? Any insights or alternative methods would be greatly appreciated! For context: I'm using Python on macOS. What am I doing wrong? This issue appeared after updating to Python 3.9. What's the correct way to implement this? This issue appeared after updating to Python 3.10.