How do I set attributes for an XML element with Python?

Question

I am using ElementTree to build an XML file.

When I try to set an element's attribute with ET.SubElement().__setattr__(), I get the error AttributeError: __setattr__.

import xml.etree.cElementTree as ET
summary = open(Summary.xml, 'w')
root = ET.Element('Summary')
ET.SubElement(root, 'TextSummary')
ET.SubElement(root,'TextSummary').__setattr__('Status','Completed') # Error occurs here
tree = ET.ElementTree(root) 
tree.write(summary)
summary.close()

After code execution, my XML should resemble the following:

<Summary>
    <TextSummary Status = 'Completed'/>
</Summary>

How do I add attributes to an XML element with Python using xml.etree.cElementTree?

Thomas Orozco · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-13 22:44:47Z

41

You should be doing:

ET.SubElement(root,'TextSummary').set('Status','Completed')

The Etree documentation shows usage.

answered Sep 13, 2013 at 22:44

Thomas Orozco

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3 Comments

Stevoisiak Over a year ago

Is there a way to set attributes for a root element?

Thomas Orozco Over a year ago

@StevenVascellaro Yes: just do root.set('foo', 'bar').

Stevoisiak Over a year ago

It turns out you can specify attributes as part of the constructor.

Stevoisiak · Accepted Answer · 2020-04-02 21:02:30Z

You can specify attributes for an Element or SubElement during creation with keyword arguments.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.Element('Summary')
ET.SubElement(root, 'TextSummary', Status='Completed')

XML:

<Summary>
    <TextSummary Status="Completed"/>
</Summary>

Alternatively, you can use .set to add attributes to an existing element.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.Element('Summary')
sub = ET.SubElement(root, 'TextSummary')
sub.set('Status', 'Completed')

XML:

<Summary>
    <TextSummary Status="Completed"/>
</Summary>

Technical Explanation:

The constructors for Element and SubElement include **extra, which accepts attributes as keyword arguments.

xml.etree.ElementTree.Element(tag, attrib={}, **extra)
xml.etree.ElementTree.SubElement(parent, tag, attrib={}, **extra)

This allows you to add an arbitrary number of attributes.

root = ET.Element('Summary', Date='2018/07/02', Timestamp='11:44am')
# <Summary Date = "2018/07/02" Timestamp = "11:44am">

You can also use use .set to add attributes to a pre-existing element. However, this can only add one element at a time. (As suggested by Thomas Orozco).

root = ET.Element('Summary')
root.set('Date', '2018/07/02')
root.set('Timestamp', '11:44am')
# <Summary Date = "2018/07/02" Timestamp = "11:44am">

Full Example:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.Element('school', name='Willow Creek High')
ET.SubElement(root, 'student', name='Jane Doe', grade='9')
print(ET.tostring(root).decode())
# <school name="Willow Creek High"><student grade="9" name="Jane Doe" /></school>

Parveen Kaloi · Accepted Answer · 2020-02-20 11:44:42Z

3

The best way to set multiple attributes in single line is below. I wrote this code for SVG XML creation:

from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET

svg = ET.Element('svg', attrib={'height':'210','width':'500'})
g = ET.SubElement(svg,'g', attrib={'x':'10', 'y':'12','id':'groupName'})
line = ET.SubElement(g, 'line', attrib={'x1':'0','y1':'0','x2':'200','y2':'200','stroke':'red'})

print(ET.tostring(svg, encoding="us-ascii", method="xml"))

answered Feb 20, 2020 at 11:44

Parveen Kaloi

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