Ignoring XML Namespace in ElementTree's "find" and "findall" Methods

When using the ElementTree module to parse and locate elements in XML documents, namespaces can introduce complexity. Here's how to ignore namespaces when using the "find" and "findall" methods in Python.

The issue arises when XML documents contain namespaces that can cause the ElementTree module to consider them when searching for tags. This can lead to unexpected results, as demonstrated by the example provided in the question:

el1 = tree.findall("DEAL_LEVEL/PAID_OFF")  # Return None
el2 = tree.findall("{http://www.test.com}DEAL_LEVEL/{http://www.test.com}PAID_OFF")  # Return element

To ignore namespaces, the solution is to modify the tags in the parsed XML document before using the "find" or "findall" methods. This can be achieved using the ElementTree's iterparse() method:

import io
from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET

# Parse the XML document
it = ET.iterparse(StringIO(xml))

# Iterate over each element and strip the namespace if present
for _, el in it:
    _, _, el.tag = el.tag.rpartition("}")  # strip ns

# Get the modified root element
root = it.root

# Now, you can search for elements without namespaces
el3 = root.findall("DEAL_LEVEL/PAID_OFF")  # Return matching elements

This solution modifies the tags in the parsed document, making it easier to locate elements without needing to manually specify the namespace prefix for each tag.