How to edit an XML file in Python?

Question

I have a resx file that uses XML with a bunch of data that looks like this:

<data name="key_first" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>Text 1</value>
</data>
<data name="key_second" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>Text 2</value>
</data>
<data name="key_third" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>Text 3</value>
</data>

where the name values all share a word (eg: "key"). What I wanted to do in Python was take this 'data' name value ("key+anything that follows") and add it to the 'value' text, and then save the new file but I'm very new to the XML/Python world and I'm kind of lost. I want it to look something like this:

<data name="key_first" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>[key_first] Text 1</value>
</data>
<data name="key_second" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>[key_second] Text 2</value>
</data>
<data name="key_third" xml:space="preserve">
    <value>[key_third] Text 3</value>
</data>

How do I do this? Should I use minidom or Element Tree?

Technically, any xml parser will do the job - you could use a sax parser FWIW -, but no one ever got fired for choosing ElementTree. — bruno desthuilliers
– bruno desthuilliers, Commented Jul 18, 2016 at 15:27
Personally, I would use lxml with XSLT, and add custom callback functions if I needed to. — o11c
– o11c, Commented Jul 18, 2016 at 16:01

alecxe · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-18 15:33:15Z

Which XML parser to choose is up to you, but here is how you can approach this problem with xml.etree.ElementTree: the idea is to iterate over all data nodes, get the name attribute value from the .attrib dictionary, locate the value element inside and set the .text appropriately:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

data = """<parent>
    <data name="key_first" xml:space="preserve">
        <value>Text 1</value>
    </data>
    <data name="key_second" xml:space="preserve">
        <value>Text 2</value>
    </data>
    <data name="key_third" xml:space="preserve">
        <value>Text 3</value>
    </data>
</parent>"""

tree = ET.fromstring(data)

for data in tree.findall("data"):
    name = data.attrib["name"]
    value = data.find("value")
    value.text = "[%s] %s" % (name, value.text)

print(ET.tostring(tree))

Prints:

<parent>
    <data name="key_first" xml:space="preserve">
        <value>[key_first] Text 1</value>
    </data>
    <data name="key_second" xml:space="preserve">
        <value>[key_second] Text 2</value>
    </data>
    <data name="key_third" xml:space="preserve">
        <value>[key_third] Text 3</value>
    </data>
</parent>

vignesh294 · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-08 19:54:22Z

0

Use the ElementTree API to read the XML file and then you can use find to find the word you want to replace or use it as an index and then from there you can insert what you need to insert. See links below:

How to update/modify an XML file in python?

https://docs.python.org/2/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html

http://luisartola.com/software/2010/easy-xml-in-python/

edited Oct 8, 2020 at 19:54

vignesh294

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answered Jul 18, 2016 at 15:32

Vaibhav

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