Writing to a xml file using pythons element tree

Question

I'm using python's Element tree library to parse/write to an xml file:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
    <data>
      <reminder id="9">
        <enabled>true</enabled>
        <programmename>Show Me Show Me</programmename>
        <starttime>10:05</starttime>
        <sdate>Tuesday, 17 November 2015</sdate>
        <channel>NA</channel>
      </reminder>
    </data>

I'm using the following to write this out:

from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET

        data = ET.Element("data")
        reminder = ET.SubElement(data, "reminder")
        reminder.set("id", "9")
        enabled = ET.SubElement(reminder, "enabled")
        enabled.text = "true"
        programmename = ET.SubElement(reminder, "programmename")
        programmename.text = new_programmename
        starttime = ET.SubElement(reminder, "starttime")
        starttime.text = new_programmetime
        sdate = ET.SubElement(reminder, "sdate")
        sdate.text = new_programmedate
        channel = ET.SubElement(reminder, "channel")
        channel.text = "NA"
        indent(data, level=0)
        tree = ET.ElementTree(data)
        tree.write(xmlfile, xml_declaration=True, encoding='utf-8', method="xml")

Although I'm struggling to understand how to add an additional "record"/element? for example, so the xml looks like this:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<data>
<reminder id="9">
    <enabled>true</enabled>
    <programmename>Show Me Show Me</programmename>
    <starttime>10:05</starttime>
    <sdate>Tuesday, 17 November 2015</sdate>
    <channel>NA</channel>
  </reminder>
<reminder id="10">
    <enabled>true</enabled>
    <programmename>foo</programmename>
    <starttime>13:05</starttime>
    <sdate>Wednesday, 18 November 2015</sdate>
    <channel>NA</channel>
  </reminder>
<data>

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated, i cant find any reference to this or rather reference that i can understand...

hi see this link http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3605680/creating-a-simple-xml-file-using-python — Prashant, Nov 17 '15 at 10:52
This just overwrites any existing elements that already exist in the file? does it not? i wish to append new elements... — Ashley Guest, Nov 17 '15 at 14:29

Learner · Answer 1 · 2015-11-18T06:33:38.450

Try as below-

from lxml import etree as et


xml="""<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
    <data>
      <reminder id="9">
        <enabled>true</enabled>
        <programmename>Show Me Show Me</programmename>
        <starttime>10:05</starttime>
        <sdate>Tuesday, 17 November 2015</sdate>
        <channel>NA</channel>
      </reminder>
    </data>"""

tree = et.fromstring(xml)
element = tree.find(".//reminder[@id='9']")
element_parent  = element.getparent()
element_parent.insert(element_parent.index(element)+1,et.XML("""

<reminder id="10">
    <enabled>true</enabled>
    <programmename>foo</programmename>
    <starttime>13:05</starttime>
    <sdate>Wednesday, 18 November 2015</sdate>
    <channel>NA</channel>
</reminder>"""))

print(et.tostring(tree))

Prints-

<data>
      <reminder id="9">
        <enabled>true</enabled>
        <programmename>Show Me Show Me</programmename>
        <starttime>10:05</starttime>
        <sdate>Tuesday, 17 November 2015</sdate>
        <channel>NA</channel>
      </reminder>
      <reminder id="10">
        <enabled>true</enabled>
        <programmename>foo</programmename>
        <starttime>13:05</starttime>
        <sdate>Wednesday, 18 November 2015</sdate>
        <channel>NA</channel>
      </reminder>
</data>

acknowledge "unutbu"

Writing to a xml file using pythons element tree

1 Answers1