Python+Qt what library/module use for reading and writing XML

Question

For my application I am using a combination of Python+Qt(PySide). I need to read from and write to XML. Currently I have implemented some part of functionality using Python's standard ElementTree module. But it has its drawbacks - for example I cannot do pretty printing of tabbed XML elemens but it rather prints everything in one line, which is machine readable but human undreadable. I cannot use CDATA elements without some hacks... etc.

I tried also Python's xml.dom.minidom module but after I read certain criticism on the web, I am reluctant to continue with it. There are other libraries such as lxml but I do not want to introduce more nonstandard dependencies to my application.

So I was thinking because I am already depending on Qt libraries, whether I should use Qt for all my work with XML. It has QXmlStreamWriter, QXmlStreamReader, QDom* classes etc., all of which I have experience when working with C++/Qt. So, is this a good strategy? Are there any drawbacks? Are Qt XML libraries better (speed, memory, robustness...) than Python's or the opposite is true?

Answer 1

I do not see the need for switching away just due to a minor feature. I was considering the same question back then, but I decided to use this minor function and the (c)ElementTree will just work for pretty printing:

def indentXmlTree(elem, level = 0): 
    ''' 
    In-place prettyprint formatter for the xml tree
    '''

    i = os.linesep + level * '  '
    if len(elem):
        if not elem.text or not elem.text.strip():
            elem.text = i + "  "
        if not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip():
            elem.tail = i 
        for elem in elem:
            indentXmlTree(elem, level + 1)
        if not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip():
            elem.tail = i 
    else:
        if level and (not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip()):
            elem.tail = i

Also note that the most (sophisticated) editors have this feature available for "pretty viewing" even for machine-readable xml files.