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Good course. Very fast progress without any prior Python knowledge.

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[The trainer] knows well what scientists need, so his hints are very practical and valuable. The hands-on course [..] covers a wide range of examples and will be very helpful in my daily work. ..

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I really liked the course since it offered a lot of information in a structured way. I especially found it helpful to see the different techniques "in action".

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Highly recommended. Many aha-experiences and took home many positive inspiratons.

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Dr. Müller is (a) very good teacher .. (I) would highly recommend this course and also Dr. Müller for this course.

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High Performance XML with Python

Dates for Open Courses

Location	Course	Date	Registration
Leipzig	High-Performance XML with Python	31.01.-01.02.2013	PDF

Also available as in-house course.

This course is given by the main author of lxml, the leading XML library for Python.

Target Audience

The course targets medium level to experienced Python programmers who want to generate and/or process XML (and, to some extend, HTML) content efficiently. A basic understanding of XML is helpful but not required.

Motivation

Since its early beginnings in 1998, the eXtensible Markup Language, XML, has grown into a standard markup language family for portable data formats. The major document formats, such as the Open Document Format (ODF) known from OpenOffice, or Microsoft's so-called OpenXML format, are based on XML, just like many application level networking protocols such as XML-RPC, SOAP or Jabber/XMPP. Many interfaces of business applications use either standardized, proprietary or ad-hoc XML formats, and their configuration files are often written in XML, too. And clearly, XML has left its fingerprint on the web through RSS/Atom feeds, Ajax interfaces and configurable browser GUIs (XHTML/XUL).

The support of XML in programming languages has constantly improved over the last decade. Today, developers can grab very efficient tools from their tool box that substantially simplify XML handling. Not surprisingly, the Python programming language has some very powerful tools available that often even beat their main contenders from the Java world in terms of performance, and easily in terms of usability.

The objective of this course if to get an understanding of important XML technologies, and to learn how to use the available tools by example.

Content

Initially, the course will build up a common understanding of XML (specifically the XML Infoset) and some of its applications. The main theme then deals with efficient processing of XML (and a bit of HTML) in Python.

The presented tool set includes the ElementTree library that comes with Python since version 2.5, and the freely available lxml library that combines a compatible Python API with a large set of additional XML features.

Introduction to XML

XML and the XML Infoset
XML Namespaces
Dealing with XML formats

Fast XML processing

Parsing and serializing XML files
Extracting information from XML documents (tree navigation, XPath, CSS selectors)
Processing and transforming XML documents in main memory
Generating XML documents
Stream processing of large XML files that do not fit into main memory

Advanced topics

Creating proprietary XML formats
Validating XML formats with schema languages (e.g. RelaxNG, Schematron)
Binding XML documents to Python objects (lxml.objectify)
Creating application specific XML APIs with lxml
Introduction to stylesheet transformations (XSLT processing)

Note that the advanced topics are subject to time constraints. A choice will be made based on the interest of the participants.

Course Duration

2 days

Exercises

The participants can follow all steps directly on their computers. There are exercises at the end of each unit providing ample opportunity to apply the freshly learned knowledge.

Course Material

Every participant receives comprehensive printed materials that cover the whole course content as wells a CD with all source codes and used software.

Recommended Module Combinations

You should have intermediate Python experience or attend the course Python for Programmers before. You might be interested in the modules Advanced Python, Optimizing of Python Programs or Python Extensions with Other Languages as well. Also, have a look at the Python Power Course, eight days of Python courses in a row.