Tag: xml

I like python because it’s minimalistic and elegant.
Let’s see how to update an XML node using ElementTree.

We use CD catalog in XML as a datasource.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="cdcatalog.xsl"?>
 <catalog>
<cd>
  <title>empire burlesque</title> 
  <artist>bob dylan</artist> 
  <country>usa</country> 
  <company>columbia</company> 
  <price>10.90</price> 
  <year>1985</year> 
  </cd>
 <cd>
  <title>hide your heart</title> 
  <artist>bonnie tyler</artist> 
  <country>uk</country> 
  <company>cbs records</company> 
  <price>9.90</price> 
  <year>1988</year> 
  </cd>
 <cd>
  <title>greatest hits</title> 
  <artist>dolly parton</artist> 
  <country>usa</country> 
  <company>rca</company> 
  <price>9.90</price> 
  <year>1982</year> 
  </cd>
</catalog>

Here is the python script itself.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET	

#parse XML file
tree = ET.parse('catalog_.xml')

#get root
root = tree.getroot()
#iterate over each price node (which is subchild of cd node)
for price in root.iter('price'):
	#get the price of CD, multiply 10
	new_price = float(price.text) * 10
	#update the text (value) of the node
	price.text = str(new_price)
	#add 'updated' attribute to mark node updated=yes
	price.set('updated', 'yes')

#can also use the same file if you want to directly update file.
tree.write('catalog_new.xml')

And the output is the following:

<catalog>
<cd>
  <title>empire burlesque</title> 
  <artist>bob dylan</artist> 
  <country>usa</country> 
  <company>columbia</company> 
  <price updated="yes">109.0</price> 
  <year>1985</year> 
  </cd>
 <cd>
  <title>hide your heart</title> 
  <artist>bonnie tyler</artist> 
  <country>uk</country> 
  <company>cbs records</company> 
  <price updated="yes">99.0</price> 
  <year>1988</year> 
  </cd>
 <cd>
  <title>greatest hits</title> 
  <artist>dolly parton</artist> 
  <country>usa</country> 
  <company>rca</company> 
  <price updated="yes">99.0</price> 
  <year>1982</year> 
  </cd>
</catalog>