python - Using SimpleXMLTreeBuilder in elementtree

Question

I have been developing an application with django and elementtree and while deploying it to the production server i have found out it is running python 2.4. I have been able to bundle elementtree but now i am getting the error:

"No module named expat; use SimpleXMLTreeBuilder instead"

Unfortunately i cannot upgrade python so im stuck with what i got. How do i use SimpleXMLTreeBuilder as the parser and/or will i need to rewrite code?

Answer 1

If you have third party module that wants to use ElementTree (and XMLTreeBuilder by dependency) you can change ElementTree's XMLTreeBuilder definition to the one provided by SimpleXMLTreeBuilder like so:

from xml.etree import ElementTree # part of python distribution
from elementtree import SimpleXMLTreeBuilder # part of your codebase
ElementTree.XMLTreeBuilder = SimpleXMLTreeBuilder.TreeBuilder

Now ElementTree will always use the SimpleXMLTreeBuilder whenever it's called.

See also: http://groups.google.com/group/google-appengine/browse_thread/thread/b7399a91c9525c97