adding nodes to xml file with same node name but different attributes with Python Dom

Question

is it possible to add two nodes with the same name to a xml document ?
That is something like that :
Initial file :

<Files>
  <Filter>
  </Filter>
</Files>

Wanted file :

<Files>
  <Filter>
    <File RelativePath=".\src\aaa.cxx" ></File>
    <File RelativePath=".\src\bbb.cxx"></File>
  </Filter>
</Files>

I would like to do that with Python, dom or minidom.
I tried to use the appendChild function but if only keep one node of the same name.
I tried to use the insertBefore function but it doesn't seem to work also.

Here is the source code I used with insertBefore (with appendChild, just have to remove the nbOfFiles control) :

document = xml.dom.minidom.parse (fileTmp)
filesItem = Item.getElementsByTagName("Files")[0]
for filter in filesItem.getElementsByTagName("Filter") :
  filterAttribute      = filter.getAttribute("Filter")
  filePath = os.path.split (fileTmp)[0] + "/src"
  filesInPath = os.listdir (filePath)
  fileElement = document.createElement ("File")
  nbOfFiles = 0
  for file in filesInPath :
    fileElement.setAttribute ("RelativePath", file)
    if nbOfFiles == 0 :
      filter.appendChild (fileElement)
      lastFileElement = fileElement
      nbOfFiles = nbOfFiles + 1
    else :
      filter.insertBefore (fileElement, None)

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

Not sure where your code is going wrong, as you've not provided a testable example. I'm not particularly familiar with minidom, I prefer lxml.

I suspect you need to instantiate each new child node separately.

This works for me:

>>> import xml.dom.minidom
>>>
>>> data_in = """<Files>
...   <Filter>
...   </Filter>
... </Files>
... """
>>>
>>> data_add = ('./src/aaa.cxx','./src/bbb.cxx')
>>>
>>> doc = xml.dom.minidom.parseString(data_in)
>>> files= doc.getElementsByTagName("Files")[0]
>>> for filter in files.getElementsByTagName("Filter"):
...   for item in data_add:
...     newNode = doc.createElement("File")
...     newNode.setAttribute('RelativePath',item)
...     filter.appendChild(newNode)
...
<DOM Element: File at 0x984c66c>
<DOM Element: File at 0x984c80c>
>>> print doc.toxml()
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<Files>
  <Filter>
  <File RelativePath="./src/aaa.cxx"/><File RelativePath="./src/bbb.cxx"/></Filter>
</Files>