Python convert array to xml with CDATA

Question

    for index in rootless:
        if rootless[index] is not None:
            rootless[index] = "<![CDATA[" + str(rootless[index]) + "]]>"

    params_xml = xmltodict.unparse(rootless)

tried adding to array before parse but it escapes special char resulting

<city>&lt;;[CDATA[new york]]&gt;</city><state>&lt;;[CDATA[NY]]&gt;</state><zip>&lt;![CDATA[10036]]&gt;</zip><phone></phone>

what i am looking for is

<city><![CDATA[new york]]></city><state><![CDATA[NY]]></state><zip><![CDATA[10036]]></zip><phone></phone>

I can technically regex > and </ into text above but there probably a better way to do this

the rootless looks likes this

{
"city": "new york",
"state": "NY",
"zip": 10036,
"phone": ""
}

Answer 1

Without getting into the structure of your dictionary, etc., here's a way to get your CDATA properly inserted.

Let's assume that your NYC address and xml are like this:

nyc = ["New York", "NY","10036"]
my_xml ="""<entry><city></city><state></state><zip></zip></entry>"""

In that case, you need to:

from lxml import etree
doc = etree.fromstring(my_xml)
for a, b in zip(nyc,doc.xpath('/entry/*')):   
    b.text = etree.CDATA(a)
etree.tostring(doc).decode())

edit:

items = {
"city": "new york",
"state": "NY",
"zip": 10036,
"phone": ""
}
my_xml ="""<entry><city></city><state></state><zip></zip><phone></phone></entry>"""

doc = etree.fromstring(my_xml)

for a, b in zip(list(items.values()),doc.xpath('/entry/*')):   
    b.text = etree.CDATA(str(a))
print(etree.tostring(doc).decode())

Output:

<entry><city><![CDATA[new york]]></city><state><![CDATA[NY]]></state><zip><![CDATA[10036]]></zip><phone><![CDATA[]]></phone></entry>