xml.dom.minidom.Node.toxml()

Node.toxml(encoding=None)

Return a string or byte string containing the XML represented by the DOM node.

With an explicit encoding [1] argument, the result is a byte string in the specified encoding. With no encoding argument, the result is a Unicode string, and the XML declaration in the resulting string does not specify an encoding. Encoding this string in an encoding other than UTF-8 is likely incorrect, since UTF-8 is the default encoding of XML.