form filling XML

Thu Oct 13 13:30:43 EDT 2005

"George" <buffer_88 at hotmail.com> wrote:

> How can I compare the text in the element tags <li> with the elements
> tags in filling and if they match replace the text within the elements
> tags <li> with the text in the matching element tag of fillin.
> For example Since the text Monday in form matches the Element tag
> <Monday> in fillin put maandag in the element tag <li> of Monday.

here's one way to do it:

    import elementtree.ElementTree as ET
    # or: import cElementTree as ET
    # or: import lxml.etree import ET

    form="""..."""

    fillin="""..."""

    form_elem = ET.XML(form)
    fill_elem = ET.XML(fillin)

    for elem in form_elem.findall(".//li"):
        text = fill_elem.findtext(elem.text)
        if text:
            elem.text = text

    print ET.tostring(form_elem)

using your example, this prints:

    <html>
    <head> <title> My Sample Web Page </title> </head>
    <body bgcolor="white">
    <p>
    What are the weekdays?
    <ol>
    <li>maandag</li>
    <li>dinsdag</li>
    <li>woensdag</li>
    <li>donderdag</li>
    <li>vrijdag</li>
    </ol>
    </p>
    </body>
    </html>

links:

    http://effbot.org/zone/element-index.htm
    http://effbot.org/zone/celementtree.htm
    http://codespeak.net/lxml/

(if you're on linux, check your local package source for elementtree
packages)

</F>