Python module¶

Import the IXBRL class which parses the file.¶

from ixbrlparse import IXBRL

Initialise an object and parse the file¶

You need to pass a file handle or other object with a .read() method.

with open('sample_ixbrl.html', encoding="utf8") as a:
  x = IXBRL(a)

If your iXBRL™ data comes as a string then use a io.StringIO wrapper to pass it to the class:

import io
from ixbrlparse import IXBRL

content = '''<some ixbrl content>'''
x = IXBRL(io.StringIO(content))

Get the contexts and units used in the data¶

These are held in the object. The contexts are stored as a dictionary with the context id as the key, and a ixbrlContext object as the value.

print(x.contexts)
# {
#    "cfwd_2018_03_31": ixbrlContext(
#       id="cfwd_2018_03_31",
#       entity="0123456", # company number
#       segments=[], # used for hypercubes
#       instant="2018-03-31",
#       startdate=None, # used for periods
#       enddate=None, # used for periods
#    ),
#    ....
# }

The units are stored as key:value dictionary entries

print(x.units)
# {
#    "GBP": "ISO4107:GBP"
#    "shares": "shares"
# }

Get financial facts¶

Numeric facts are stored in x.numeric as a list of ixbrlNumeric objects. The ixbrlNumeric.value object contains the value as a parsed python number (after the sign and scale formatting values have been applied).

ixbrlNumeric.context holds the context object relating to this value. The .name and .schema values give the key of this value, according to the applied schema.

Non-numeric facts are stored in x.nonnumeric as a list of ixbrlNonnumeric objects, with similar .value, .context, .name and .schema values. The value of .value will be a string for non-numeric facts.

Check for any parsing errors¶

By default, the parser will throw an exception if it encounters an error when processing the document.

You can parse raise_on_error=False to the initial object to suppress these exceptions. You can then access a list of the errors (and the element) that created them through the .errors attribute. For example:

with open('sample_ixbrl.html', encoding="utf8") as a:
  x = IXBRL(a, raise_on_error=False)
  print(x.errors) # populated with any exceptions found
  # [ eg...
  #   ixbrlError(
  #     error=<NotImplementedError>,
  #     element=<BeautifulSoupElement>
  #   )
  # ]

Note that the error catching is only available for parsing of .nonnumeric and numeric items in the document, as well as context items. Any other errors with parsing will be thrown as normal no matter what raise_on_error is set to. Errors in context items may make it more difficult to use the resulting data.