Adding \n after every element in an XML python

Question

I'm making an automation that takes an existing XML file, changes one of the values and overwrites the file.

My main problem is that its important for me to keep the formatting of the original file and i can't manage to do that, the new data has no line breaks and its all just a long line.

<StationConfig StationId="8706" SportType="null" StationType="null" UseMetricSystem="US" LocalTempStorageDrive="C:\" LocalStorageDrive="C:\">
<ClubManagementEnable ClubManagementStaticHours="">false</ClubManagementEnable>
</StationConfig>

My code is:

parser = etree.XMLParser()
    read = etree.parse("C:\StationConfig.xml", parser=parser).getroot()
    read.set("StationId", "8706")
    tree = etree.ElementTree(read)
    tree.write("C:\devtree\Station.xml", pretty_print=True)

How can i add an \n after each element? Thanks!

With ElementTree in Python 3.9, you can use the `indent()` function to pretty-print. https://stackoverflow.com/a/63373633/407651. See also https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28813876/how-do-i-get-pythons-elementtree-to-pretty-print-to-an-xml-file — mzjn, Aug 17 '21 at 11:26
ElementTree has no `pretty_print` option (it is lxml that has this option). — mzjn, Aug 17 '21 at 11:33
You can use XSLT transformation for both tasks: (1) modify whatever is needed, (2) indent the output. — Yitzhak Khabinsky, Aug 17 '21 at 11:48
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/25447006/adding-line-breaks-between-attributes — S P Sharan, Aug 17 '21 at 11:49
the indent() is indenting the tags and not the elements inside the StationConfig tag — Aviv Kaplan, Aug 17 '21 at 12:01
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55321960/how-to-format-text-attributes-of-elements-in-xslt-into-one-line Saxon extensions require Saxon-PE or higher. It is a paid version. — Yitzhak Khabinsky, Aug 17 '21 at 12:48

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Aug 17 '21 at 18:41

As far as I understand, the below is what you are looking for.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

xml = '''<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<StationConfig StationId="8706" SportType="null" StationType="null" UseMetricSystem="US" LocalTempStorageDrive="C:\" LocalStorageDrive="C:\">
   <ClubManagementEnable ClubManagementStaticHours="">false</ClubManagementEnable>
</StationConfig>'''


def _pretty_print(current, parent=None, index=-1, depth=0):
    for i, node in enumerate(current):
        _pretty_print(node, current, i, depth + 1)
    if parent is not None:
        if index == 0:
            parent.text = '\n' + ('\t' * depth)
        else:
            parent[index - 1].tail = '\n' + ('\t' * depth)
        if index == len(parent) - 1:
            current.tail = '\n' + ('\t' * (depth - 1))


root = ET.fromstring(xml)
# change something in the xml
root.attrib['StationId'] = '123'
# save it back to disk
_pretty_print(root)
tree = ET.ElementTree(root)
tree.write("out.xml")

out.xml below

<StationConfig StationId="123" SportType="null" StationType="null" UseMetricSystem="US" LocalTempStorageDrive="C:" LocalStorageDrive="C:">
    <ClubManagementEnable ClubManagementStaticHours="">false</ClubManagementEnable>
</StationConfig>

Adding \n after every element in an XML python

1 Answers1