how to add file path in to python script

Question

I have got a script that delves into a given directory recursively, digs out all files that have a specific file name and puts the contents of all the ones it finds into a single file.

The script works as I need it to in terms of hunting the files and outputting all the contents to a single xml file. However I would like it to add in the file path as well so I know the location of each given file it has found. This is my code so far:

import glob

lines=[] #list
for inputfile in glob.glob('D:\path\to\scan\**\project_information.xml', recursive=True): 
    with open ('D:\path\result\output.xml', 'w') as out_file:
        with open (inputfile, "rt") as in_file:  
            print("<projectpath>", inputfile, file=out_file)
            for line in in_file: 
                lines.append(line.rstrip('\n'))
            for linenum, line in enumerate(lines):
                print(line, file=out_file)

Each project_information.xml the script looks for looks like the below:

<project>
<name>project1</name>
<Projection>UTM84-30N</Projection>
<Build>Jan 30 2015</Build>
</project>

Ideally for every entry that is found and subsequently added to my output I would like it write the file path within the tag. (You may have guess this is an XML table to go in to Excel) for example -

<project>
**<filepath>C:\path\to\file\**
<name>project1</name>
<Projection>UTM84-30N</Projection>
<Build>Jan 30 2015</Build>
</project>
<project>
**<filepath>C:\path\to\file\blah\**
<name>project2</name>
<Projection>UTM84-30N</Projection>
<Build>Jan 30 2015</Build>
</project>

I thought adding a line after the with statement would do it but that only appears to print the first occurrence and not get in the loop - Not only that even if that did work, it wouldn't be within the parent tag.

print("<projectpath>", inputfile, file=out_file)

Pretty new to python so any suggestions or changes to my crude code are very much appreciated!

############UPDATE

So as @olinox14 suggested I had a look at the lxml module and got it to add a new tag in with that.

 tree = ET.parse(in_file) root = tree.getroot() for child in root: folder = ET.SubElement(child, 'folder') folder.text = (in_file.name) tree.write('C:\\\\output\\\\output2.xml') 

Answer 1

Many things here:

1. AsGPhilo said in the comments, consider using a dedicated library to handle XML files, most known is lxml .
2. You should permute your for inputfile in... and with open(...) as out_file to avoid opening/closing this file at each iteration
3. Do not use print(..., file=...) when you can use out_file.write(...)

A good start here, you could need to arrange it:

import glob
from lxml import etree

root = etree.Element("root")

with open ('D:\path\result\output.xml', 'w') as out_file:
    for inputfile in glob.glob('D:\path\to\scan\**\project_information.xml', recursive=True): 

        with open (inputfile, "r") as in_file:
            project = etree.SubElement(root, "project", path=in_file)
            # ... continue with your processing

    root.write(out_file, pretty_print=True)