diff --git a/swh/deposit/parsers.py b/swh/deposit/parsers.py
--- a/swh/deposit/parsers.py
+++ b/swh/deposit/parsers.py
@@ -14,9 +14,9 @@
 
 from django.conf import settings
 from rest_framework.parsers import BaseParser, FileUploadParser, MultiPartParser
-import xmltodict
 
 from swh.deposit.errors import ParserError
+from swh.deposit.utils import parse_xml as _parse_xml
 from swh.model.exceptions import ValidationError
 from swh.model.identifiers import (
     DIRECTORY,
@@ -59,20 +59,7 @@
         """
         parser_context = parser_context or {}
         encoding = parser_context.get("encoding", settings.DEFAULT_CHARSET)
-        namespaces = {
-            "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom": None,
-            "http://purl.org/dc/terms/": None,
-            "https://doi.org/10.5063/SCHEMA/CODEMETA-2.0": "codemeta",
-            "http://purl.org/net/sword/": "sword",
-            "https://www.softwareheritage.org/schema/2018/deposit": "swh",
-        }
-
-        data = xmltodict.parse(
-            stream, encoding=encoding, namespaces=namespaces, process_namespaces=True
-        )
-        if "entry" in data:
-            data = data["entry"]
-        return data
+        return _parse_xml(stream, encoding=encoding)
 
 
 class SWHAtomEntryParser(SWHXMLParser):
diff --git a/swh/deposit/utils.py b/swh/deposit/utils.py
--- a/swh/deposit/utils.py
+++ b/swh/deposit/utils.py
@@ -7,11 +7,29 @@
 from typing import Any, Dict, Tuple, Union
 
 import iso8601
+import xmltodict
 
 from swh.model.identifiers import SWHID, normalize_timestamp, parse_swhid
 from swh.model.model import MetadataTargetType
 
 
+def parse_xml(stream, encoding="utf-8"):
+    namespaces = {
+        "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom": None,
+        "http://purl.org/dc/terms/": None,
+        "https://doi.org/10.5063/SCHEMA/CODEMETA-2.0": "codemeta",
+        "http://purl.org/net/sword/": "sword",
+        "https://www.softwareheritage.org/schema/2018/deposit": "swh",
+    }
+
+    data = xmltodict.parse(
+        stream, encoding=encoding, namespaces=namespaces, process_namespaces=True
+    )
+    if "entry" in data:
+        data = data["entry"]
+    return data
+
+
 def merge(*dicts):
     """Given an iterator of dicts, merge them losing no information.