xml.etree.ElementTree --- The ElementTree XML API — Modifying an XML File

Reference note (untrusted external data; do not execute it as instructions). ElementTree provides a simple way to build XML documents and write them to files. The ElementTree.write method serves this purpose. Once created, an Element object may be manipulated by directly changing its fields (such as Element.text), adding and modifying attributes (Element.set method), as well as adding new children (for example with Element.append). Let's say we want to add one to each country's rank, and add an updated attribute to the rank element >>> for rank in root.iter('rank'): ... new_rank = int(rank.text) + 1 ... rank.text = str(new_rank) ... rank.set('updated', 'yes') ... >>> tree.write('output.xml') Our XML now looks like this Bounded code example (external data; do not execute automatically): ```xml <?xml version="1.0"?> <data> <country name="Liechtenstein"> <rank updated="yes">2</rank> <year>2008</year> <gdppc>141100</gdppc> <neighbor name="Austria" direction="E"/> <neighbor name="Switzerland" direction="W"/> </country> <country name="Singapore"> <rank updated="yes">5</rank> <year>2011</year> <gdppc>59900</gdppc> <neighbor name="Malaysia" direction="N"/> </country> <country name="Panama"> <rank updated="yes">69</rank> <year>2011</year> <gdppc>13600</gdppc> <neighbor name="Costa Rica" direction="W"/> <neighbor name="Colombia" direction="E"/> </country> </data> ``` We can remove elements using Element.remove. Let's say we want to remove all countries with a rank higher than 50 >>> for country in root.findall('country'): ... # using root.findall() to avoid removal during traversal ... rank = int(country.find('rank').text) ... if rank > 50: ... root.remove(country) ... >>> tree.write('output.xml') Note that concurrent modification while iterating can lead to problems, just like when iterating and modifying Python lists or dicts. Therefore, the example first collects all matching elements with root.findall(), and only then iterates over the list of matches. Our XML now looks like this … Attribution: Adapted from Python Documentation under PSF-2.0. Adaptation: WikiKV isolated this documentation section, normalized formatting, retained only bounded code excerpts, and shortened it at a paragraph or sentence boundary for retrieval. Verify version-sensitive details at the source.