CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythonxmlparsingelementtree
Hunter McMillen
Hunter McMillen

Reputation: 61550

Overwriting XML file

I am trying to parse an XML file using elementtree. The XML file I am trying to read however got exported from MySql and when the XML file is created if I have an entry in the database like: c:cygwin\bin it translates the '\b' as a backspace. Anyway I am trying to delete all the entries of '\b' from the XML file so I can send it through the elementtree.parse() method. And for some reason, after removing all the entries of '\b' I am not writing the entire file out.

Here is what I am doing:

def preprocess(file):
    #exporting from MySQL query browser adds a weird
    #character to the result set, remove it
    #so the XML parser can read the data
    print "in preprocess"
    lines = map(lambda line: line.replace("\b", " "), file)

    #go to the beginning of the file
    file.seek(0);

    #overwrite with correct data
    file.writelines(lines)
    sys.exit()


'''Entry into the program'''
#test the file to see if processing is needed before parsing
for line in xml_file:
    p = re.compile("\\b") #search for '\b'
    if(p.match(line)):
        processing = True
        break #only one match needed

if processing:
    preprocess(xml_file)

The results are I end up with an XML file that has the header cut off, so when passed to the parser it fails.

This is what gets cut out of the XML file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE ROOT SYSTEM "diskreport.dtd">
<ROOT>
    <row>
      <field name="buildid">26960</field>
      <field name="cast(status as char)">Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
C:cygwinin        285217976  88055920 197162056  31% /usr/bin

Any help/ideas would be awesome, Thanks

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1129

Answers (1)

Hunter McMillen
Hunter McMillen

Reputation: 61550

I figured out the problem, I was using p.match to look for matches of '\b' when I really needed to be using p.search, p.match only looks from the beginning of the line, search looks for occurences throughout the entire line.

Solution:

def preprocess(file):
    #exporting from MySQL query browser adds a weird
    #character to the result set, remove it
    #so the XML parser can read the data
    print "in preprocess"
    lines = map(lambda line: line.replace("\b", ""), file)

    #go to the beginning of the file
    file.seek(0);

    #overwrite with correct data
    file.writelines(lines)
    sys.exit()


'''Entry into the program'''
#test the file to see if processing is needed before parsing
for line in xml_file:
    p = re.compile("\\b")
    if(p.search(line)): ####Changed to p.search here
        processing = True
        break #only one match needed

if processing:
    preprocess(xml_file)

Upvotes: 1

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