Introduction to the Python lxml Library
lxml is a Python library which allows for easy handling of XML and HTML files, and can also be used for web scraping. There are a lot of off-the-shelf XML parsers out there, but for better results, developers sometimes prefer to write their own XML and HTML parsers. This is when the lxml library comes to play. The key benefits of this library are that it’s ease of use, extremely fast when parsing large documents, very well documented, and provides easy conversion of data to Python data types, resulting in easier file manipulation.
In this tutorial, we will deep dive into Python’s lxml library, starting with how to set it up for different operating systems, and then discussing its benefits and the wide range of functionalities it offers.
Installation
There are multiple ways to install lxml on your system. We’ll explore some of them below.
Using Pip
Pip is a Python package manager which is used to download and install Python libraries to your local system with ease i.e. it downloads and installs all the dependencies for the package you’re installing, as well.
If you have pip installed on your system,