Remove namespace declaration from ElementTree in lxml

[Stefan Behnel]

Zero Piraeus wrote:
> I want to remove an unused namespace declaration from the root element
> of an ElementTree in lxml.
> 
> There doesn't seem to be any documented way to do this, so at the
> moment I'm reduced to sticking the output through str.replace() ...
> which is somewhat inelegant.

And also a bit error prone (unless you are sure the replaced string really
only occurs where you want to replace it). You can try this:

   root = etree.parse(...).getroot()
   new_root = etree.Element(root.tag, root.attrib)
   new_root[:] = root[:]

Note, however, that this will not copy root-level PIs or internal DTD subsets.
But you can copy PIs and comments by hand.

Stefan