CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonxmlpython-2.7lxmlelementtree
user2643864
user2643864

Reputation: 651

Unable to remove element/node using ElementTree

I have an issue with ElementTree that I can't quite figure out. I've read all their documentation as well as all the information I could find on this forum. I have a couple elements/nodes that I am trying to remove using ElementTree. I don't get any errors with the following code, but when I look at the output file I wrote the changes to, the elements/nodes that I expected to be removed are still there. I have a document that looks like this:

<data>
  <config>
    <script filename="test1.txt"></script>
    <documentation filename="test2.txt"></script>
  </config>
</data>

My code looks as follows:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ElementTree    
xmlTree = ElementTree.parse(os.path.join(sourcePath, "test.xml"))
xmlRoot = xmlTree.getroot()
for doc in xmlRoot.findall('documentation'):
     xmlRoot.remove(doc)

xmlTree.write(os.path.join(sourcePath, "testTWO.xml"))

The result is I get the following document:

<data>
  <config>
    <script filename="test1.txt" />
    <documentation filename="test2.txt" />
  </config>
</data>

What I need is something more like this. I am not stuck using ElementTree. If there is a better solution with lxml or some other library, I am all ears. I know ElementTree can be a little bit of a pain at times.

<data>
  <config>
  </config>
</data>

Upvotes: 0

Views: 207

Answers (1)

har07
har07

Reputation: 89285

xmlRoot.findall('documentation') in your code didn't find anything, because <documentation> isn't direct child of the root element <data>. It is actually direct child of <config> :

"Element.findall() finds only elements with a tag which are direct children of the current element". [19.7.1.3. Finding interesting elements]

This is one possible way to remove all children of <config> using findall() given sample XML you posted (and assuming that the actual XML has <documentation> element closed with proper closing tag instead of closed with </script>) :

......
config = xmlRoot.find('config')

# find all children of config
for doc in config.findall('*'):
    config.remove(doc)
    # print just to make sure the element to be removed is correct
    print ElementTree.tostring(doc)
......

Upvotes: 2

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