How to include xml prolog to xml files using python 3?

Question

I want to include the XML prolog in my XML file…
I tried the following –

ET.tostring(root, encoding='utf8', method='xml')

But it works only while printing and not for writing to file.
I have a small code where I am changing an attribute and modifying the XML file. But I want to add the XML prolog also. Any idea how to ?

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse('xyz.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
root[0].text = 'abc'
ET.tostring(root, encoding='utf8', method='xml')
tree.write('xyz.xml')

Asked By: Apoorva Singh

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Source

Answer 1

Using lxml.etree does it:

import lxml.etree

xml = lxml.etree.parse('xyz.xml')
root = xml.getroot()
root[0].text = 'abc'

with open("xyz2.xml", 'wb') as f:
    f.write(lxml.etree.tostring(root, xml_declaration=True, encoding="utf-8"))

print(open("xyz2.xml", 'r').read())

Output:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<note>
  <to>abc</to>
  <from>Jani</from>
  <heading>Reminder</heading>
  <body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>

Answered By: Maurice Meyer

Answer 2

In order to add prolog to XML you need to pass additional parameter (xml_declaration) to tree.write() method as follows:

tree.write('xyz.xml', xml_declaration=True)

The last but one code line is redundant, so our method should take one more parameter:

tree.write('xyz.xml', encoding='UTF-8', xml_declaration=True)

The corrected code will be as follows:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse('xyz.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
root[0].text = 'abc'
tree.write('xyz.xml', encoding='UTF-8', xml_declaration=True)

P.S. As enconding and xml_declaration are the second and the third optional named parameters, call of write method can be simplified:

tree.write('xyz.xml', 'UTF-8', True)

Answered By: Ivan Grakov

How to include xml prolog to xml files using python 3?

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