= Asking for Help: Is there a way to create a file object from text without touching the file system? =

I want to use ElementTree to parse a text object, but the ElementTree.parse function looks like it only takes file objects.  I'm doing this all from within Blender, and don't want to touch the filesystem - so is there a way to create a file object from text (to pass to parse) without touching the file system?  I'd also like to go the other way, create a text object from an ElementTree object.

== Answer ==

The `StringIO` module provides support for treating strings like file objects. Since there's a faster version of the module, the idiom to use to access the all-important `StringIO` class (yes, it has the same name) is as follows:

{{{#!python
try:
    from cStringIO import StringIO
except ImportError:
    from StringIO import StringIO
}}}

In fact, for the exact problem you're having, the example "21 lines: XML/HTML parsing (using Python 2.5 or third-party library)" from the SimplePrograms page should at least help you with the parsing problem. For serialising ("going the other way"), you probably want to create a `StringIO` object and then pass it to the appropriate ElementTree node method.

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