unescaping xml text from ElementTree in python

Question

I'm trying to pull out an escape noded from an XML document. The raw text for the node looks like this:

<Notes>{&quot;Phase&quot;: 0, &quot;Flipper&quot;: 0, &quot;Guide&quot;: 0,     
&quot;Sample&quot;: 0, &quot;Triangle8&quot;: 0, &quot;Triangle5&quot;: 0,     
&quot;Triangle4&quot;: 0, &quot;Triangle7&quot;: 0, &quot;Triangle6&quot;: 0,     
&quot;Triangle1&quot;: 0, &quot;Triangle3&quot;: 0, &quot;Triangle2&quot;: 0}</Notes> 

I'm pulling the text out as follows:

infile = ET.parse("C:/userfiles/EXP011/SESAME_60/SESAME_60_runinfo.xml")
r = infile.getroot()
XMLNS = "{http://example.com/foo/bar/runinfo_v4_3}"
x=r.find(".//"+XMLNS+"Notes")
print(x.text)

I expected to get:

{"Phase": 0, "Flipper": 0, "Guide&quot": 0,     
"Sample": 0, "Triangle8": 0, "Triangle5": 0,     
"Triangle4": 0, "Triangle7": 0, "Triangle6": 0,     
"Triangle1": 0, "Triangle3": 0, "Triangle2": 0}

but, instead, I got:

 {"Phase": 0, "Flipper": 0, "Guide": 0,      
 "Sample": 0, "Triangle8": 0, "Triangle5": 0,   
 "Triangle4": 0, "Triangle7": 0, "Triangle6": 0, 
 "Triangle1": 0, "Triangle3": 0, "Triangle2": 0}

How do I get the unescaped string?

Answer 1

Use HTMLParser.HTMLParser():

In [8]: import HTMLParser    

In [11]: HTMLParser.HTMLParser().unescape('"')
Out[11]: u'"'

saxutils handles <, > and &, but it does not handle ".

In [9]: import xml.sax.saxutils as saxutils

In [10]: saxutils.unescape('"')
Out[10]: '"'    

Answer 2

Since python 3.4 you can use html.unescape.

>>> from html import unescape
>>> unescape('"')
'"'