Understanding " 'xml.etree.ElementTree.Element' does not support the buffer interface"

[Steven D'Aprano]

On Mon, 11 Jan 2016 02:04 am, kbtyo wrote:

> Hello Everyone:
> 
> I am curious to know why I receive the aforementioned message. I am using
> Python 3.4.3 and Windows 7. I am running the following script from Windows
> Powershell:

I created a file "data" containing the input data you said:

> The input data is as follows:
> 
> A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J
> "3","8","1","<Request TransactionID="3" RequestType="FOO"><InstitutionISO
> /><CallID>23</CallID><MemberID>12</MemberID><MemberPassword
> /><RequestData><AccountNumber>2</AccountNumber><AccountSuffix>85</AccountSuffix><AccountType>S</AccountType><MPIAcctType>Checking</MPIAcctType><TransactionCount>10</TransactionCount></RequestData></Request>","<Response
> TransactionID="2"
>
RequestType="HoldInquiry"><PulledLoans>True</PulledLoans><PulledClosedLoans>False</PulledClosedLoans><PulledInvestments>False</PulledInvestments><PulledClosedInvestments>False</PulledClosedInvestments><PulledCards>False</PulledCards><ShareList>0000',0001,0070,</ShareList></Response>","1967-12-25
> 22:18:13.471000","2005-12-25 22:18:13.768000","2","70","0"



and then a script containing the code you said you used:

> import xml.etree.cElementTree as ElementTree
> from xml.etree.ElementTree import XMLParser
 
> Response = 's.csv'
> with open(Response, 'rU', encoding='utf-8') as data:
>     separated = data.read().split('","')
>     x = ElementTree.XML(separated[3])
>     y = ElementTree.XML(separated[4])
>     print(dict(flatten_dict(x)))
>     print(dict(flatten_dict(y)))


I get a completely different error to you, complete with traceback as
expected:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/testxml.py", line 9, in <module>
    print(dict(flatten_dict(x)))
NameError: name 'flatten_dict' is not defined


This shows me three things:

(1) The calls to ElementTree.XML work fine, and don't raise an exception;

(2) There is no error message referring to xml.etree.ElementTree.Element or
the buffer interface;

(3) The code you posted is clearly not the code you actually ran. At the
very least, it is not *all* the code you ran.

We cannot tell what it wrong with your code if you don't show us the code
that fails. I suggest you read this webpage:

http://www.sscce.org/

and follow the advice given. It's written for Java, but applies to any
programming language. Hopefully you will either solve your problem, or be
able to generate a sufficiently small piece of code that we can work with.


You also suggest that your code works when running in a Jupyter Notebook. It
is unlikely (but not impossible!) that exactly the same code will run
differently when run as a script and when run under Jupyter. More likely,
there is some difference between the code, something you have written in
the Notebook but not included in the script.

If it is exactly the same code, then perhaps it is a difference in the two
environments. Does Jupyter set up the environment differently to what you
get when running a script?

Finally, in another post, you state:

"That is the only message (*xml.etree.ElementTree.Element' does not support
the buffer interface"*). There is no traceback."


That is very unlikely with the code sample you posted. If true, that gives
more evidence that you are running code which is different from what you
have posted here. Perhaps your ACTUAL code (not the pretend code you showed
us) includes a try...except block like this:

try:
    some code goes here
except Exception as err:
    print(err)
    sys.exit()


or similar. If so, TAKE IT OUT. That is destroying useful debugging
information and making it more difficult to solve your problem.





-- 
Steven