How To Handle Different Exceptions Raised In Different Python Version

Trying to parse a malformed XML content with xml.etree.ElementTree.parse() raises different exception in Python 2.6.6 and Python 2.7.5 Python 2.6: xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError Pyth

Solution 1:

This isn't pretty, but it should be workable ...

ParseError = xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError if sys.version < (2, 7) else xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseErrortry:
    ...
except ParseError:
    ...

You might need to modify what you import based on versions (or catch ImportError while importing the various submodules from xml if they don't exist on python2.6 -- I don't have that version installed, so I can't do a robust test at the moment...)

Solution 2:

Based on mgilson's answer:

from xml.etree import ElementTree

try:
    # python 2.7+# pylint: disable=no-memberParseError = ElementTree.ParseError
except ImportError:
    # python 2.6-# pylint: disable=no-memberfrom xml.parsers import expat
    ParseError = expat.ExpatError

try:
    doc = ElementTree.parse(<file_path>)
except ParseError:
    <handle error here>

• Define ParseError in runtime depending on Python's version. Infer Python version from ImportError exception being raised or not
• Add pylint disable directives to not break Pylint validation
• For some reason, if only xml is imported, ParseError = xml.etree.ElementTree.ParseError and ParseError = xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError fail; intermediate imports of etree and expat modules fix that