Namespace Handling

Universal Feed Parser attempts to expose all possible data in feeds, including elements in extension namespaces.

Some common namespaced elements are mapped to core elements. For further information about these mappings, see Reference.

Other namespaced elements are available as prefixelement.

The namespaces defined in the feed are available in the parsed results as namespaces, a dictionary of {prefix: namespaceURI}. If the feed defines a default namespace, it is listed as namespaces[''].

Accessing namespaced elements

>>> import feedparser
>>> d = feedparser.parse('https://feedparser.readthedocs.io/en/expand-json-feed-support/examples/prism.rdf')
>>> d.feed.prism_issn
'0028-0836'
>>> d.namespaces
{'': 'http://purl.org/rss/1.0/',
'prism': 'http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/1.2/basic/',
'rdf': 'http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'}

The prefix used to construct the variable name is not guaranteed to be the same as the prefix of the namespaced element in the original feed. If Universal Feed Parser recognizes the namespace, it will use the namespace’s preferred prefix to construct the variable name. It will also list the namespace in the namespaces dictionary using the namespace’s preferred prefix.

In the previous example, the namespace (http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/1.2/basic/) was defined with the namespace’s preferred prefix (prism), so the prism:issn element was accessible as the variable d.feed.prism_issn. However, if the namespace is defined with a non-standard prefix, Universal Feed Parser will still construct the variable name using the preferred prefix, not the actual prefix that is used in the feed.

This will become clear with an example.

Accessing namespaced elements with non-standard prefixes

>>> import feedparser
>>> d = feedparser.parse('https://feedparser.readthedocs.io/en/expand-json-feed-support/examples/nonstandard_prefix.rdf')
>>> d.feed.prism_issn
'0028-0836'
>>> d.feed.foo_issn
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "feedparser\util.py", line 149, in __getattr__
    return self.__getitem__(key)
  File "feedparser\util.py", line 112, in __getitem__
    return dict.__getitem__(self, key)
KeyError: 'foo_issn'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "feedparser\util.py", line 151, in __getattr__
    raise AttributeError("object has no attribute '%s'" % key)
AttributeError: object has no attribute 'foo_issn'
>>> d.namespaces
{'': 'http://purl.org/rss/1.0/',
'prism': 'http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/1.2/basic/',
'rdf': 'http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#'}

This is the complete list of namespaces that Universal Feed Parser recognizes and uses to construct the variable names for data in these namespaces:

Prefix

Namespace

admin

http://webns.net/mvcb/

ag

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/aggregation/

annotate

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/annotate/

audio

http://media.tangent.org/rss/1.0/

blogChannel

http://backend.userland.com/blogChannelModule

cc

http://web.resource.org/cc/

co

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/company

content

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/

cp

http://my.theinfo.org/changed/1.0/rss/

creativeCommons

http://backend.userland.com/creativeCommonsRssModule

dc

http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/

dcterms

http://purl.org/dc/terms/

email

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/email/

ev

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/event/

feedburner

http://rssnamespace.org/feedburner/ext/1.0

fm

http://freshmeat.net/rss/fm/

foaf

http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/

geo

http://www.w3.org/2003/01/geo/wgs84_pos#

icbm

http://postneo.com/icbm/

image

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/image/

itunes

http://example.com/DTDs/PodCast-1.0.dtd

itunes

http://www.itunes.com/DTDs/PodCast-1.0.dtd

l

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/link/

media

http://search.yahoo.com/mrss

pingback

http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/pingback/

prism

http://prismstandard.org/namespaces/1.2/basic/

rdf

http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#

rdfs

http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#

ref

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/reference/

reqv

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/richequiv/

search

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/search/

slash

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/

soap

http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/

ss

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/servicestatus/

str

http://hacks.benhammersley.com/rss/streaming/

sub

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/subscription/

sy

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/

szf

http://schemas.pocketsoap.com/rss/myDescModule/

taxo

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/taxonomy/

thr

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/threading/

ti

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/textinput/

trackback

http://madskills.com/public/xml/rss/module/trackback/

wfw

http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/

wiki

http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/wiki/

xhtml

http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml

xlink

http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink

xml

http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace

Note

Universal Feed Parser treats namespaces as case-insensitive to match the behavior of certain versions of iTunes.

Warning

Data from namespaced elements is not sanitized (even if it contains HTML markup).