CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonxml
Duccio Piovani
Duccio Piovani

Reputation: 1460

Read an xml file in Python

I am reading a file with a jml extension. The code is very simple and it reads 

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('VOAPoints_2010_M25.jml')
root = tree.getroot()

but I get a parsing error: 

ParseError: not well-formed (invalid token): line 75, column 16

the file I am trying to read is a dataset that has been used before so I am confident that there are no problems with it.

The file is enter image description here enter image description here Can anyone help ?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 353

Answers (2)

malarres
malarres

Reputation: 2946

Sorry for using an answer as a question, but formatting this inside a comment is painful. Does the code below solve your problem?

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
myParser = ET.XMLParser(encoding="utf-8")
tree = ET.parse('VOAPoints_2010_M25.jml',parser=myParser)
root = tree.getroot()

Upvotes: 2

Parfait
Parfait

Reputation: 107567

Since the pound sign was the issue, you can escape it with the character entity £. Python can even automate the replace in XML file by iteratively reading each line and replacing it conditionally on the pound symbol:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

oldfile = "VOAPoints_2010_M25.jml"
newfile = "VOAPoints_2010_M25_new.jml"

with open(oldfile, 'r') as otxt:
    for rline in otxt:
        if "£" in rline:
            rline = rline.replace("£", "£")

        with open(newfile, 'a') as ntxt:
            ntxt.write(rline)

tree = ET.parse(newfile)
root = tree.getroot()

Upvotes: 1

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