Python: ElementTree, get the namespace string of an Element
Question: This XML file is named `example.xml`:

    
    
    <?xml version="1.0"?>
    <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/maven-v4_0_0.xsd">
    
      <modelVersion>14.0.0</modelVersion>
      <groupId>.com.foobar.flubber</groupId>
      <artifactId>uberportalconf</artifactId>
      <version>13-SNAPSHOT</version>
      <packaging>pom</packaging>
      <name>Environment for UberPortalConf</name>
      <description>This is the description</description>    
      <properties>
          <birduberportal.version>11</birduberportal.version>
          <promotiondevice.version>9</promotiondevice.version>
          <foobarportal.version>6</foobarportal.version>
          <eventuberdevice.version>2</eventuberdevice.version>
      </properties>
      <!-- A lot more here, but as it is irrelevant for the problem I have removed it -->
    </project>
    

If I load example.xml and parse it with ElementTree I can see its namespace is
`http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0`.

    
    
    >>> from xml.etree import ElementTree
    >>> tree = ElementTree.parse('example.xml')
    >>> print tree.getroot()
    <Element '{http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0}project' at 0x26ee0f0>
    

I have not found a method to call to get just the namespace from an `Element`
without resorting to parsing the `str(an_element)` of an Element. It seems
like there got to be a better way.


Answer: The namespace should be in
[`Element.tag`](http://docs.python.org/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html#xml.etree.ElementTree.Element.tag)
right before the "actual" tag:

    
    
    >>> root = tree.getroot()
    >>> root.tag
    '{http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0}project'
    

To know more about namespaces, take a look at [ElementTree: Working with
Namespaces and Qualified Names](http://effbot.org/zone/element-
namespaces.htm).

