Pylons / Pylons/webtest

lxml as BeautifulSoup parser

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#256 2 comments 1 reaction 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Dominant language
Python
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Forks
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Description

Feature Request

I would like to propose the addition of an option to select lxml as the parser for BeautifulSoup responses, instead of the current fixed default of html.parser.

It will improve parsing speed for large or complex documents.

I believe this enhancement would make webtest even more versatile and powerful for a wide range of testing scenarios. I am looking forward to your thoughts on this proposal and am happy to contribute to the discussion or assist with preliminary testing.

Thank you for considering my suggestion and for your ongoing efforts to improve the webtest library.

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start by locating where WebTest builds BeautifulSoup responses and where the parser is fixed to html.parser. Add coverage for selecting lxml as an alternative parser and verify that the option preserves existing behavior while enabling faster parsing for large or complex documents.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
testing
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

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