Modifying attributes in XML file with Python

Question

I am very, very new to Python so please be kind!

I have created a test file in XML which has a list of fake customers and their associated telephone numbers. This was manually produced and took a fair while! I'm hoping to create an automated solution in Python to replace the first digit of the customer_ID (stored as an attribute within the XML) and generate a new XML.

After a few hours reading and developing here is my code;

# Python code for test data generation

import re
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse('Junk\\Test_File.xml')

root = tree.getroot()

for child in tree.iter():
Cust_ID = re.findall('([0-9]{10})', child.text)
A = [Cust_ID.replace(Cust_ID[0],'1') for Cust_ID in Cust_IDs]

print(A)

tree.write('Junk\\New.xml')

So far I can isolate the list of Customer IDs as Cust_ID and replace the first digit as required. My issue is writing these new values in my output.

Given how junior I am to this code I'm not 100% I'm on the right path so any pointers to a more complete solution (if there is one) would also be appreciated.

Many thanks

Answer 1

These day most people use libraries you have a number of choices.

2 I've used

1. LXml

2. CElementTree

    import xml.etree.cElementTree as ET root = ET.Element("root") file = ET.SubElement(root, "file") ET.SubElement(file, "fieldone", name="1").text = "something1" ET.SubElement(file, "field2two", name="2").text = "something2" tree = ET.ElementTree(root) tree.write("file.xml") 

   Here are some useful documentation links

http://lxml.de/tutorial.html

http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm

https://docs.python.org/3/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html

Be aware xml.etree.ElementTree isn't secure