CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonxmllxmlelementtree
bz247
bz247

Reputation: 43

python etree insert, append and SubElement

I want to create an element tree like this in Python:

<parent>
  <child/>
  <child/>
  <child/>
</parent>

I want to use it as an empty template that I can work on later. However, I cannot insert or append multiple <child> element to the <parent> element, though etree.SubElement works. To be more specific:

This produces <parent><child/></parent>, i.e., only one <child> got inserted:

root = etree.Element('root')
child = etree.Element('child')
for i in range(3):
  root.insert(0,child)

This does not work either and produce the same result as above:

root = etree.Element('root')
child = etree.Element('child')
for i in range(3):
  root.append(child)

This works:

root = etree.Element('root')
for i in range(3):
  etree.SubElement('child')

I don't understand why I cannot insert or append an element for multiple times.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 13295

Answers (1)

Ronan
Ronan

Reputation: 176

I guess you need to create new element objects to append them to the root, otherwise it is the same element that you append twice, which has no effect :

root = etree.Element('root')

for i in range(3):
    child = etree.Element('child')
    root.append(child)

Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 3

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