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+--- Thread: Remove Empty tags in XML using plain python without lxml library (/thread-12328.html)
Remove Empty tags in XML using plain python without lxml library - saurabhverma2412 - Aug-20-2018
My use case is to remove empty tags in an XML using simple plain python 2.7. No extra lxml library is available.
Sample XML:
<ArML>
<MsgHeader>
<Deal>
<Attribute>
<Name>First</Name>
<Value>10</Value>
</Attribute>
<Attribute>
<Name>Second</Name>
<Value></Value>
</Attribute>
<Attribute>
<Name>Third</Name>
<Value></Value>
</Attribute>
<Attribute>
<Name>Fourth</Name>
<Value>40</Value>
</Attribute>
</Deal>
</MsgHeader>
<MsgHeader>
<Deal>
<Attribute>
<Name>Fifth</Name>
<Value>10</Value>
</Attribute>
<Attribute>
<Name>Sixth</Name>
<Value></Value>
</Attribute>
<Attribute>
<Name>Seventh</Name>
<Value>70</Value>
</Attribute>
<Attribute>
<Name>Eight</Name>
<Value></Value>
</Attribute>
</Deal>
</MsgHeader>
</ArML>
I am using the below code, but it is not working properly for all the empty tags. Please help.
for elem in root.iter('MsgHeader'):
Deal = root.find("./MsgHeader/Deal")
empty = root.find("./MsgHeader/Deal/Attribute/[Value='']")
Deal.remove(empty)
print(ET.tostring(root, encoding='utf8').decode('utf8'))
RE: Remove Empty tags in XML using plain python without lxml library - nilamo - Aug-20-2018
Could you provide the actual code you're running, so we can try it out? For example, I don't even know what module you're using, as
find() or nodelist.remove() aren't part of either the DOM nor SAX interfaces.
RE: Remove Empty tags in XML using plain python without lxml library - saurabhverma2412 - Aug-20-2018
Below is the whole code that i'm using as of now.
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.parse("xml_test.txt")
root = tree.getroot()
for elem in root.iter('MsgHeader'):
Deal = root.find("./MsgHeader/Deal")
empty = root.find("./MsgHeader/Deal/Attribute/[Value='']")
Deal.remove(empty)
print(ET.tostring(root, encoding='utf8').decode('utf8'))The use case is that at some places in the sample XML, the <Value> tag is empty. So every-time we encounter a tag like this, we need to remove the corresponding <Attribute> tag from the xml itself.
RE: Remove Empty tags in XML using plain python without lxml library - saurabhverma2412 - Aug-21-2018
I believe that without using extra library like lxml etc., this requirement might not be possible, but as an implementation specialist i found a work-around for this.
You can replace your empty string with the 'NULL' keyword and then remove the line altogether where ever you find 'NULL' in the XML.