ContentHandler.startElement(name, attrs) Signals the start of an element in non-namespace mode. The name parameter contains the raw XML 1.0 name of the element type as a string and the attrs parameter holds an object of the Attributes interface (see The Attributes Interface) containing the attributes of the element. The object passed as attrs may be re-used by the parser; holding on to a reference to it is not a reliable way to keep a copy of the attributes. To keep a copy of the attributes,

ContentHandler.setDocumentLocator(locator) Called by the parser to give the application a locator for locating the origin of document events. SAX parsers are strongly encouraged (though not absolutely required) to supply a locator: if it does so, it must supply the locator to the application by invoking this method before invoking any of the other methods in the DocumentHandler interface. The locator allows the application to determine the end position of any document-related event, even if

ContentHandler.startPrefixMapping(prefix, uri) Begin the scope of a prefix-URI Namespace mapping. The information from this event is not necessary for normal Namespace processing: the SAX XML reader will automatically replace prefixes for element and attribute names when the feature_namespaces feature is enabled (the default). There are cases, however, when applications need to use prefixes in character data or in attribute values, where they cannot safely be expanded automatically; the star

ContentHandler.startDocument() Receive notification of the beginning of a document. The SAX parser will invoke this method only once, before any other methods in this interface or in DTDHandler (except for setDocumentLocator()).

ContentHandler.skippedEntity(name) Receive notification of a skipped entity. The Parser will invoke this method once for each entity skipped. Non-validating processors may skip entities if they have not seen the declarations (because, for example, the entity was declared in an external DTD subset). All processors may skip external entities, depending on the values of the feature_external_ges and the feature_external_pes properties.

ContentHandler.startElementNS(name, qname, attrs) Signals the start of an element in namespace mode. The name parameter contains the name of the element type as a (uri, localname) tuple, the qname parameter contains the raw XML 1.0 name used in the source document, and the attrs parameter holds an instance of the AttributesNS interface (see The AttributesNS Interface) containing the attributes of the element. If no namespace is associated with the element, the uri component of name will be N

class xml.sax.handler.ContentHandler This is the main callback interface in SAX, and the one most important to applications. The order of events in this interface mirrors the order of the information in the document.

ContentHandler.processingInstruction(target, data) Receive notification of a processing instruction. The Parser will invoke this method once for each processing instruction found: note that processing instructions may occur before or after the main document element. A SAX parser should never report an XML declaration (XML 1.0, section 2.8) or a text declaration (XML 1.0, section 4.3.1) using this method.

ContentHandler.endDocument() Receive notification of the end of a document. The SAX parser will invoke this method only once, and it will be the last method invoked during the parse. The parser shall not invoke this method until it has either abandoned parsing (because of an unrecoverable error) or reached the end of input.

ContentHandler.ignorableWhitespace(whitespace) Receive notification of ignorable whitespace in element content. Validating Parsers must use this method to report each chunk of ignorable whitespace (see the W3C XML 1.0 recommendation, section 2.10): non-validating parsers may also use this method if they are capable of parsing and using content models. SAX parsers may return all contiguous whitespace in a single chunk, or they may split it into several chunks; however, all of the characters i