add element in a existing xml file python

Question

I have a existing xml file as following:

<vehicleTravelTimeMeasurements>
        <vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement name="ckkkkkkkkkk" no="2">
            <start link="1" pos="3.864983"/>
            <end link="3" pos="23.275375"/>
        </vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement>
        <vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement name="" no="3">
            <start link="1" pos="3.864983"/>
            <end link="2" pos="13.275375"/>
        </vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement>
</vehicleTravelTimeMeasurements>

I am trying to construct the same format as shown above by using xml.etree.cElementTree, and add them into the xml correctly:

new = ET.Element("vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement", name = "kkk", no = "4")
newsub1 =  ET.Element("start", link = "1", pos="3.88888")
newsub2 = ET.Element("end",link = "3", pos = "3.88888")

could someone help me out with this?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

You wanted to use SubElement and add the start and end elements to the vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement element. Then insert that newly created element at position 2, since 0 and 1 are already occupied.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

def indent(elem, level=0):
    i = "\n" + level*"  "
    if len(elem):
        if not elem.text or not elem.text.strip():
            elem.text = i + "  "
        if not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip():
            elem.tail = i
        for elem in elem:
            indent(elem, level+1)
        if not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip():
            elem.tail = i
    else:
        if level and (not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip()):
            elem.tail = i

xml = '''<vehicleTravelTimeMeasurements>
        <vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement name="ckkkkkkkkkk" no="2">
            <start link="1" pos="3.864983"/>
            <end link="3" pos="23.275375"/>
        </vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement>
        <vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement name="" no="3">
            <start link="1" pos="3.864983"/>
            <end link="2" pos="13.275375"/>
        </vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement>
</vehicleTravelTimeMeasurements>'''

root = ET.fromstring(xml)
new = ET.Element("vehicleTravelTimeMeasurement", name = "kkk", no = "4")
newsub1 = ET.SubElement(new, "start", link = "1", pos="3.88888")
newsub2 = ET.SubElement(new, "end",link = "3", pos = "3.88888")
root.insert(2, new)
indent(root)
with open('test.xml', 'w') as f:
    f.write(ET.tostring(root))