用于重命名XML元素的Python

Question

I have a XML file where I want to edit or rename elements and save the file. What is the best way to do it. The XML file is given below

<breakfast_menu>
<food>
    <name>Belgian Waffles</name>
    <price>$5.95</price>
    <description>two of our famous Belgian Waffles with plenty of real maple syrup</description>
    <calories>650</calories>
</food>
<food>
    <name>Strawberry Belgian Waffles</name>
    <price>$7.95</price>
    <description>light Belgian waffles covered with strawberries and whipped cream</description>
    <calories>900</calories>
</food>
<food>
    <name>Berry-Berry Belgian Waffles</name>
    <price>$8.95</price>
    <description>light Belgian waffles covered with an assortment of fresh berries and whipped cream</description>
    <calories>900</calories>
</food>
<food>
    <name>French Toast</name>
    <price>$4.50</price>
    <description>thick slices made from our homemade sourdough bread</description>
    <calories>600</calories>
</food>
<food>
    <name>Homestyle Breakfast</name>
    <price>$6.95</price>
    <description>two eggs, bacon or sausage, toast, and our ever-popular hash browns</description>
    <calories>950</calories>
</food>
</breakfast_menu>

How can I change "description" to "details"?

Answer 1

I'm suggesting you to use ElementTree to parse your XML document.

This is the simple and the best library to deal with XML docs in python.

Here is an example code:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as xmlParser
xmlDoc = xmlParser.parse('path to your xml doc')
rootElement = xmlDoc.getroot()

for element in rootElement.iter('description'):
    element.tag = 'details'

# Saving the xml
xmlDoc.write('path to your new xml doc')

Answer 2

If your xml will always stay this simple, you could use regular expressions:

import re
xml = """
<breakfast_menu>
...
</breakfast_menu>
"""
regex = re.compile('<description>(.*)</description>')
xml = regex.sub(r'<details>\1</details>',xml)

Answer 3

Well you have two options. If the xml is small, a plain string replacement would do. If the xml is very big then I would advise applying a xsl transformation.