Parse an elementTree to return a string in XML form - Python

Question

is there a way to parse an entire ElementTree from a file and return it as a string in python? I would like to read the entire file into a single string value, for example grabbing the entire output of dump(tree)? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!

xml

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

print "Enter a filename"
filename = input()
tree = ET.parse(filename)
string = tree.tostring() ##is there a way to do something like this?

test.xml

<data>

     <serial>

     <serial name = "serial">SN001</serial>

     </serial>

     <items>

    <item>Test1 = Failed</item>

    <item>Test2 = Passed</item>

    <item>Test3 = Passed</item>

      </items>

</data>

Robᵩ · Accepted Answer · 2014-06-09 21:08:04Z

2

tostring is a module function, not a method.

string = ET.tostring(tree.getroot())

answered Jun 9, 2014 at 21:08

Robᵩ

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3 Comments

wheatfairies Over a year ago

I tried something like that earlier and got an error saying that ElementTree has no attribute named 'tag'

Robᵩ Over a year ago

@wheatfairies - Yep, I did, too. I've updated my answer.

wheatfairies Over a year ago

Excellent! That was exactly what I needed. Thank you Rob. I will accept your answer when it becomes available.

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