How to to search a key in an xml and replace it's value with Python?

Question

I have thousands of these app name lines in an xml file:

<app name="app-sq-461-author-core-0">

I want to do the following:

check through all lines that 'app name' exists
if so, see if the value matches "test"
If so, replace the value with "delete me"

Currently, I have:

bare = importedxml.find('app name')
testvalue = bare.split("=")[1]
if testvalue = "test" in importedxml:
   testvalue = "delete me"

What is the best way to do this? I'm encountering many problems.

Rafael T · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-07 16:53:40Z

2

Have You tried BeautifulSoup? Something along these lines

import bs4

xml = "Your bare XML String"
soup = bs4.BeautifulSoup(xml)
test_apps = soup.findChildren("app", {"name": "test"})
for app in test_apps:
    app["name"] = "delete me"

with open("filename.xml", "w") as f:
    f.write(str(soup))

but, as you mentioned in you comment below, that you do not have bs4, the only thing I can think of is using a regex replace.

import re

xml = "your XML String"
pattern = re.compile('app name="test"')
replaced = pattern.sub('app name="delete me"', xml)

edited Mar 7, 2016 at 16:53

answered Mar 7, 2016 at 16:21

Rafael T

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1 Comment

david Over a year ago

Yea I really want to switch over to beautiful soup, the problem is getting my work place to approve. So for now, I can't use it.

John Gordon · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-07 17:18:56Z

0

sed 's/<app name="foo">/<app name="bar">/g' < file.xml > file.xml.new
mv file.xml file.xml.old
mv file.xml.new file.xml

answered Mar 7, 2016 at 17:18

John Gordon

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2 Comments

Rafael T Over a year ago

How do you know, that op has a *nix machine?

John Gordon Over a year ago

I don't. The command syntax ought to be similar enough, no? And even if op's machine does not have sed at all, the intent of the operation is clear.

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