Facing an error while modifying XML file with python

Question

I am parsing an XML file and trying to delete a empty node but I am receiving the following error:

ValueError: list.remove(x): x not in lis

The XML file is as follows:

<toc>
  <topic filename="GUID-5B8DE7B7-879F-45A4-88E0-732155904029.xml" docid="GUID-5B8DE7B7-879F-45A4-88E0-732155904029" TopicTitle="Notes, cautions, and warnings" />
  <topic filename="GUID-89943A8D-00D3-4263-9306-CDC944609F2B.xml" docid="GUID-89943A8D-00D3-4263-9306-CDC944609F2B" TopicTitle="HCI Deployment with Windows Server">
    <childTopics>
      <topic filename="GUID-A3E5EA96-2110-46FF-9251-2291DF755F50.xml" docid="GUID-A3E5EA96-2110-46FF-9251-2291DF755F50" TopicTitle="Installing the OMIMSWAC license" />
      <topic filename="GUID-7C4D616D-0D9A-4AE1-BE0F-EC6FC9DAC87E.xml" docid="GUID-7C4D616D-0D9A-4AE1-BE0F-EC6FC9DAC87E" TopicTitle="Managing Microsoft HCI-based clusters">
        <childTopics>
        </childTopics>
      </topic>
    </childTopics>
  </topic>
</toc>

Kindly note that this is just an example format of my XML File. I this file, I want to remove the empty tag but I am getting an error. My current code is:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse("toc2 - Copy.xml")
root = tree.getroot()

node_to_remove = root.findall('.//childTopics//childTopics')
for node in node_to_remove:
    root.remove(node)

There is an closing for the other childTopics too. I didn't include it in the above example code because the file is too large :) — Prog 14936
– Prog 14936, Commented Jan 17, 2023 at 12:47
I've updated the question so that the XML is valid, and I have corrected the typo in your findall expression that would have caused it to always return empty results. You should always ensure that the code and data in your questions are syntactically correct, because if there are obvious problems people will focus on those instead of the actual question. — larsks
– larsks, Commented Jan 17, 2023 at 12:54

larsks · Accepted Answer · 2023-01-17 12:51:58Z

1

You need to call remove on the node's immediate parent, not on root. This is tricky using xml.etree, but if instead you use lxml.etree you can write:

import lxml.etree as ET

tree = ET.parse("data.xml")
root = tree.getroot()

node_to_remove = root.findall('.//childTopics//childTopics')
for node in node_to_remove:
    node.getparent().remove(node)

print(ET.tostring(tree).decode())

Nodes in xml.etree do not have a getparent() method. If you're unable to use lxml, you'll need to look into other solutions for finding the parent of a node; this question has some discussion on that topic.

answered Jan 17, 2023 at 12:51

larsks

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