The xml.dom.minidom module is essentially a DOM
1.0-compatible DOM with some DOM 2 features (primarily namespace
features).
Usage of the DOM interface in Python is straight-forward. The
following mapping rules apply:
Interfaces are accessed through instance objects. Applications
should not instantiate the classes themselves; they should use
the creator functions available on the Document object.
Derived interfaces support all operations (and attributes) from
the base interfaces, plus any new operations.
Operations are used as methods. Since the DOM uses only
in parameters, the arguments are passed in normal
order (from left to right). There are no optional
arguments. void operations return None.
IDL attributes map to instance attributes. For compatibility
with the OMG IDL language mapping for Python, an attribute
foo can also be accessed through accessor methods
_get_foo() and _set_foo(). readonly
attributes must not be changed; this is not enforced at
runtime.
The types short int, unsigned int, unsigned
long long, and boolean all map to Python integer
objects.
The type DOMString maps to Python strings.
xml.dom.minidom supports either byte or Unicode
strings, but will normally produce Unicode strings. Attributes
of type DOMString may also be None.
const declarations map to variables in their
respective scope
(e.g. xml.dom.minidom.Node.PROCESSING_INSTRUCTION_NODE);
they must not be changed.
DOMException is currently not supported in
xml.dom.minidom. Instead,
xml.dom.minidom uses standard Python exceptions such
as TypeError and AttributeError.
NodeList objects are implemented as Python's built-in
list type, so don't support the official API, but are much more
``Pythonic.''
The following interfaces have no implementation in
xml.dom.minidom:
DOMTimeStamp
DocumentType (added in Python 2.1)
DOMImplementation (added in Python 2.1)
CharacterData
CDATASection
Notation
Entity
EntityReference
DocumentFragment
Most of these reflect information in the XML document that is not of
general utility to most DOM users.