Editing XML as a dictionary in python?

Question

I\'m trying to generate customized xml files from a template xml file in python.

Conceptually, I want to read in the template xml, remove some elements, change some

Answer 1

For easy manipulation of XML in python, I like the Beautiful Soup library. It works something like this:

Sample XML File:

  leaf1
  leaf2

Python code:

from BeautifulSoup import BeautifulStoneSoup, Tag, NavigableString

soup = BeautifulStoneSoup('config-template.xml') # get the parser for the xml file
soup.contents[0].name
# u'root'

You can use the node names as methods:

soup.root.contents[0].name
# u'level1'

It is also possible to use regexes:

import re
tags_starting_with_level = soup.findAll(re.compile('^level'))
for tag in tags_starting_with_level: print tag.name
# level1
# level2

Adding and inserting new nodes is pretty straightforward:

# build and insert a new level with a new leaf
level3 = Tag(soup, 'level3')
level3.insert(0, NavigableString('leaf3')
soup.root.insert(2, level3)

print soup.prettify()
# 
#  
#   leaf1
#  
#  
#   leaf2
#  
#  
#   leaf3
#  
#