Change name of xml attribute for multiple files via python

Question

I would like to change the name of an attribute on an xml element in multiple files. These files are an output from an image annotation tool. I have 1000 of such files, thus the position of those attribute name is not absolute.

My file is available at [XML FILE][1].

Here I would like to change

 <attribute dynamic="false" name="Multiset Column Chart with Error Bars " type="http://lamp.cfar.umd.edu/viperdata#bbox"/>

TO

<attribute dynamic="false" name="Column Chart " type="http://lamp.cfar.umd.edu/viperdata#bbox"/>

and

<attribute name="Multiset Column Chart with Error Bars "/>

TO

<attribute name="Column Chart "/>

So far I can access the element in the first code snipped as

root=xmldoc.getroot()
print(root[0][0][11].attrib)

but it is not certain that this name "Multiset Column Chart with Error Bars " will always be at position [0][0][11].

So, I am not sure how can I access those specific names and can change the value for the name as I showed above.

Any assistance will be appreciated.

END NOTE

I had to remove the link to the source xml file because this file is part of my research project.

Answer 1

I am assuming that the structure of your xml file will be same as

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<viper xmlns="http://lamp.cfar.umd.edu/viper#" xmlns:data="http://lamp.cfar.umd.edu/viperdata#">
    <config>
        <descriptor name="Desc0" type="OBJECT">
            <attribute dynamic="false" name="Reflexive Bar Chart " type="http://lamp.cfar.umd.edu/viperdata#bbox"/>

and so on.

you can select the tag attribute and set the attribute for that tag like this:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('contents.xml').getroot()
print tree.tag, tree.text
for child in tree[0][0]:
    print child.set("name","bhansa")
    print child.attrib #just to check whether changed or not

then write the changes in xml file

tree.write("file_name")

Have a good reading here about xml and python

Answer 2

A bit different from bhansa solution. I need some if else clause to check the names and then replace the name for some conditions.

root=xmldoc.getroot()
#print(root[0][0])
for child in root[0][0]:
    if(child.get('name') == 'Coulmn Chart with Error Bars '):
      child.set("name","Column Chart")
    print (child.attrib) #just to check whether changed or not