untangle

What it is and what it does

untangle is a lightweight XML-to-Python object converter that lets you access XML elements and attributes using Python dot notation instead of XPath or DOM traversal. It parses XML from files, URLs, or strings and automatically groups sibling elements with the same name into lists. Special characters in element names (hyphens, dots, colons) are converted to underscores, so an XML element like `<foo-bar/>` becomes accessible as `foo_bar`.

The package depends on defusedxml for secure parsing and supports Python 3.7 through 3.10. It is designed for straightforward XML reading tasks where you want simple, intuitive access to the document structure without the verbosity of standard XML libraries. However, the project is no longer maintained, meaning no updates or bug fixes will be released.

Use it for:

• Parse configuration files in XML format and access settings via simple dot notation.
• Read RSS or Atom feeds and extract article metadata without writing XPath expressions.
• Convert REST API responses in XML format into navigable Python objects for data extraction.
• Process XML documents where element names contain hyphens or dots that need transparent mapping.
• Build quick prototypes or scripts that consume XML without setting up DOM or SAX parsers.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Converts XML documents into Python objects with dot-notation access to elements and attributes, handling special characters by substituting them with underscores.

Yes, if you need simple XML parsing for a one-off script or non-critical application and are comfortable with an unmaintained package. The low install friction and permissive license make it easy to adopt. However, avoid it for production systems, security-sensitive applications, or projects requiring ongoing maintenance—consider lxml or xml.etree.ElementTree instead.

Install

untangle on PyPI

pip install untangle

uv add untangle

poetry add untangle

Installing untangle

Before you install

Low install friction with a single runtime dependency on defusedxml. However, the package is abandoned—last release was 1504 days ago—so no maintenance or security updates are forthcoming.

License in practice

MIT license is permissive; you can use, modify, and distribute this package with minimal restrictions, though you must include the original license notice.

Quickstart

pip install untangle

import untangle
obj = untangle.parse('file.xml')
print(obj.root.child['name'])

Requires Python 3.7 or later; defusedxml must be installed as a runtime dependency.

Verify before relying

• Whether the package still works reliably with Python 3.10 despite abandonment and lack of recent testing.
• Whether defusedxml's security updates are sufficient to mitigate XML vulnerabilities in untangle's parsing chain.

Package facts

Evidence: untangle-1.2.1-py3-none-any.whl

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