Merge specific child nodes in xml using python

Question

I want to merge certain sub elements of xml file together. The following is the format I have:

 <?xml version='1.0' encoding='ISO-8859-1'?><?xml-stylesheet type='text/xsl' href='image_metadata_stylesheet.xsl'?><dataset><name>imglab dataset</name><comment>Created by imglab tool.</comment><images>
<image file='/home/user126043/Documents/testimages/9935.jpg'>
<box top='329' left='510' width='385' height='534'>
<label>Pirelli
</label></box></image>
<image file='/home/user126043/Documents/testimages/9935.jpg'>
<box top='360' left='113' width='440' height='147'>
<label>Pirelli
</label></box></image>
<image file='/home/user126043/Documents/testimages/9921.jpg'>
<box top='329' left='510' width='385' height='534'>
<label>Pirelli
</label></image>
</images></dataset>

In the above xml I have the box coordinates of image 99.jpg specified twice which I want to merge into one. I want to remove the <image> tag that appears repeatively for the same image and want to merge all the box coordinates for every single image within its own image tags. I have never worked with XML and hence I am not sure if the definitions that I use is right here or not. The desired output is:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='ISO-8859-1'?><?xml-stylesheet type='text/xsl' href='image_metadata_stylesheet.xsl'?><dataset><name>imglab dataset</name><comment>Created by imglab tool.</comment><images>
    <image file='/home/user126043/Documents/testimages/9935.jpg'>
    <box top='329' left='510' width='385' height='534'>
    <label>Pirelli
    </label></box>
    <box top='360' left='113' width='440' height='147'>
    <label>Pirelli
    </label></box></image>
    <image file='/home/user126043/Documents/testimages/9921.jpg'>
    <box top='329' left='510' width='385' height='534'>
    <label>Pirelli
    </label></image>
    </images></dataset>

fyi: you can use an XML validator to check your xml codebeautify.org/xmlvalidator/cba0c900. as you can see it is "valid" — chickity china chinese chicken
– chickity china chinese chicken, Commented Oct 2, 2017 at 6:07

Tiny.D · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-03 05:08:34Z

2

You can try with module xml.etree.ElementTree :

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('dataset.xml')
root = tree.getroot()
file_dict = dict()
for image in root.iter('image'):    
    file_str = image.get('file')    
    if file_str in file_dict:
        root.find('images').remove(image) #remove the duplicate one
        root.find('images').find("./image[@file='"+file_str+"']").append(image.find('box')) #append duplicated subelement to merge with same image element
    else:
        file_dict[file_str]=image
print(ET.tostring(root))

The new root will be:

<dataset><images>
<image file="/home/user126043/Documents/testimages/9941.jpg">
<box height="147" left="113" top="360" width="440">
<label>Pirelli
</label></box></image>
<image file="/home/user126043/Documents/testimages/99.jpg">
<box height="276" left="247" top="160" width="228">
<label>Pirelli
</label></box><box height="276" left="247" top="439" width="506">
<label>Pirelli
</label></box></image>
</images></dataset>

edited Oct 3, 2017 at 5:08

answered Oct 2, 2017 at 7:46

Tiny.D

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7 Comments

Apricot Over a year ago

Many thanks...I tried using the code...but getting the following error..

Traceback (most recent call last):   File "<stdin>", line 4, in <module>   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 337, in remove     self._children.remove(element) ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list

Tiny.D Over a year ago

are you sure you are using the same code, please note that root[0].remove(image) not root.remove(image)

Tiny.D Over a year ago

can you print out your root[0] with print(ET.tostring(root[0])) before the remove?

Apricot Over a year ago

Thanks a ton for your message...the following is the output

<name>imglab dataset</name> Traceback (most recent call last):   File "clrxml2.py", line 9, in <module>     root[0].remove(image) #remove the duplicate one   File "/usr/lib/python2.7/xml/etree/ElementTree.py", line 337, in remove     self._children.remove(element) ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in list

Apricot Over a year ago

Not sure if the error is because of the name tag....I am updating the xml again for your reference

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