Malformed XML repair using python

Question

I have 50 XML files which has mismatched tags and I want to repair them using python. The opening tag <names> is different from closing tag </name>. Can anyone guide me please.

    <breakfast_menu>
      <food>
        <names>Belgian Waffles</name>
        <price>$5.95</price>
        <calories>650</calories>
     </food>
    </breakfast_menu>

[This answer](http://stackoverflow.com/a/399996/477878) may be of interest. — Joachim Isaksson, Apr 21 '13 at 06:03
Why did you get such malformed xml files? Is it possible to fix the program that generates the xml? — xwang, Jun 28 '16 at 19:44

TerryA · Answer 1 · 2013-04-21T06:37:56.710

6

BeautifulSoup does this:

>>> from bs4 import BeautifulSoup
>>> myxml = # Your posted XML
>>> soup = BeautifulSoup(myxml,'xml')
>>> print soup
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<breakfast_menu>
<food>
<names>Belgian Waffles</names>
<price>$5.95</price>
<calories>650</calories>
</food>
</breakfast_menu>

If you were looking for <name></name>:

>>> for i in soup.findAll('names'):
...     i.name = 'name'
...
>>> print soup
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<breakfast_menu>
<food>
<name>Belgian Waffles</name>
<price>$5.95</price>
<calories>650</calories>
</food>
</breakfast_menu>

edited Apr 21 '13 at 06:37

answered Apr 21 '13 at 06:04

TerryA

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How do I change the opening tag same as closing tag and not the other way – user1138880 Apr 21 '13 at 06:30
1

BeautifulSoup can't do this directly when calling `BeautifulSoup`, but I have added in a way of doing so. – TerryA Apr 21 '13 at 06:38
Thanks a lot let me try that out – user1138880 Apr 21 '13 at 06:41
also how do I open a XML in bs4 and then save it after modification. – user1138880 Apr 21 '13 at 06:52
Your question isn't very clear. If you're talking about file input/output, then that's another question that can easily be searched upon on a search engine (or even this site itself) – TerryA Apr 21 '13 at 07:06

Malformed XML repair using python

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