Using lxml to add a string as a sub element

Question

I have an lxml element with children built like this:

xml = etree.Element('presentation')
format_xml = etree.SubElement(xml, 'format')
content_xml = etree.SubElement(xml, 'slides')

I then have several strings that I would like it iterate over and add each as child element to slides. Each string will be something like this:

<slide1>
    <title>My Presentation</title>
    <subtitle>A sample presentation</subtitle>
    <phrase>Some sample text
        <subphrase>Some more text</subphrase>
    </phrase>
</slide1>

How can I append these strings as children to the slides element?

Padraic Cunningham · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-18 14:47:54Z

4

Just append:

import lxml.etree as etree

xml = etree.Element('presentation')
format_xml = etree.SubElement(xml, 'format')
content_xml = etree.SubElement(xml, 'slides')
new = """<slide1>
    <title>My Presentation</title>
    <subtitle>A sample presentation</subtitle>
    <phrase>Some sample text
        <subphrase>Some more text</subphrase>
    </phrase>
</slide1>"""


content_xml.append(etree.fromstring(new))


print(etree.tostring(xml,pretty_print=1))

Which will give you:

<presentation>
  <format/>
  <slides>
    <slide1>
    <title>My Presentation</title>
    <subtitle>A sample presentation</subtitle>
    <phrase>Some sample text
        <subphrase>Some more text</subphrase>
    </phrase>
</slide1>
  </slides>
</presentation>

answered Apr 18, 2016 at 14:47

Padraic Cunningham

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Comments

alecxe · Accepted Answer · 2016-04-18 14:47:41Z

1

fromstring() function would load an XML string directly into an Element instance which you can append:

from lxml import etree as ET

slide = ET.fromstring(xml_string)
content_xml.append(slide)

answered Apr 18, 2016 at 14:47

alecxe

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