madpah/serializable

defusedxml still required?

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#194 opened on Mar 5, 2026

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enhancementhelp wanted

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Description

In https://github.com/madpah/serializable/pull/5, defusedxml has been introduced as a dependency to prevent XEE attacks.

According to the docs, defusedxml should not be required anymore with recent Python versions and the recommendation for defusedxml has been removed from the official Python docs after some discussions:

According to the table at https://github.com/tiran/defusedxml?tab=readme-ov-file#python-xml-libraries, the mentioned attacks should not be possible with modern Python anymore.

Is the dependency still required here?

Contributor guide

Research direction
Check the Python version range supported by this library and verify if defusedxml is still needed based on the official Python docs and the defusedxml repository. Consider removing the dependency if it's no longer required.
Tech stack
python
Domain
backend
Issue type
Research
DifficultyEstimated implementation difficulty for a new contributor, from 1 for very small changes to 5 for expert-level work.
2
Estimated timeA rough time range for an experienced contributor to investigate, implement, test, and prepare a pull request.
Under 1 hour
Activity statusHow available the issue appears right now: fresh, active, stale, blocked, or waiting on maintainer input.
Active
ClarityHow clearly the issue explains the expected change, acceptance criteria, and next step.
Clear
Prerequisites
PythonXML security concepts
Newbie friendlinessA 1-100 score estimating how approachable this issue is for first-time contributors.
75