Finding Unique Elements in Two Lists with lxml.etree

This function takes two lists as input and uses the lxml library to convert the lists into XML elements, then compares the XML elements to find unique elements in the two lists.

Technology Stack : Python, lxml

Code Type : Python Function

Code Difficulty : Intermediate

                
                    
def find_unique_elements(list1, list2):
    # This function finds unique elements in two lists using lxml.etree
    from lxml import etree
    
    # Convert lists to XML elements
    root1 = etree.Element("root")
    for item in list1:
        etree.SubElement(root1, "item").text = str(item)
    
    root2 = etree.Element("root")
    for item in list2:
        etree.SubElement(root2, "item").text = str(item)
    
    # Find unique elements
    unique_elements = []
    for item in list1:
        if not etree.ElementTree(root2).find(f".//item[text='{item}']").getparent():
            unique_elements.append(item)
    
    return unique_elements