xml.dom.minidom appendChild/toxml formatting problem

[Uche Ogbuji]

rrarey at gmail.com (Ray) wrote in message news:<6471d296.0411051330.1477041 at posting.google.com>...

[SNIP]

> after calling domi.normalize(), domi.toxml(), and
> configFile.write(), the XML looks like:
> <Cluster Name="RAYTEST">
>    <Cluster Name="RAYTEST2"><Cluster Name="RAYTEST3"/></Cluster>
> </Cluster>
> 
> instead of how I would like it to look, which would be:
> <Cluster Name="RAYTEST">
>    <Cluster Name="RAYTEST2">
>       <Cluster Name="RAYTEST3"/>
>    </Cluster>
> </Cluster>
> 
> Or, if I append "RAYTEST3" to "RAYTEST", it comes out as:
> <Cluster Name="RAYTEST">
>    <Cluster Name="RAYTEST2"/>
> <Cluster Name="RAYTEST3"/></Cluster>
> 
> Instead of:
> <Cluster Name="RAYTEST">
>    <Cluster Name="RAYTEST2"/>
>    <Cluster Name="RAYTEST3"/>
> </Cluster>
> 
> 
> The rest of the XML file retains its original whitespace and
> linebreaks.  How can I get this to format the new changes correctly? 
> Calling toprettyxml instead of toxml seems to double the whitespace
> and linebreaks in the rest of the file.

There are many solutions to this, all of which require that you
properly understand what nodes are really there in a given DOM (and in
particular, understanding exactly how text nodes work).

One good way I've found for getting people familiar with the actual
DOM tree structure is using a GUi tree widget.  See, for instance
listing 2 in:

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/04/09/py-xml.html

Anyway, for the "pretty printing confused thinsg by only adding
whitespace" complaint, I suggest you strip whitespace first.  There
are many libraries with routines for this, but you could start with
the following cookbook recipe if you like:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/303061

Good luck.

-- 
Uche Ogbuji                                    Fourthought, Inc.
http://uche.ogbuji.net    http://4Suite.org    http://fourthought.com
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XML's growing pains - http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10196
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