For my case, I have to find few elements in the XML file and update their values using the text attribute. For that, I have to search xml element A, B and C. My project is using xml.etree and python language. Currently I am using:
self.get_root.findall(H/A/T)
self.get_root.findall(H/B/T)
self.get_root.findall(H/C/T)
The sample XML file:
<H><A><T>text-i-have-to-update</H></A></T>
<H><B><T>text-i-have-to-update</H></B></T>
<H><C><T>text-i-have-to-update</H></C></T>
As we can notice, only the middle element in the path is different. Is there a way to optimize the code using something like self.get_root.findall(H|(A,B,C)|T)? Any guidance in the right direction will do! Thanks!
I went through the similar question: XPath to select multiple tags but it didn't work for my case
Update: maybe regular expression inside the findall()?
The html in your question is malformed; assuming it's properly formatted (like below), try this:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
data = """<root>
<H><A><T>text-i-have-to-update</T></A></H>
<H><B><T>text-i-have-to-update</T></B></H>
<H><C><T>text-i-have-to-update</T></C></H>
</root>"""
doc = ET.fromstring(data)
for item in doc.findall('.//H//T'):
item.text = "modified text"
print(ET.tostring(doc).decode())
Output:
<root>
<H><A><T>modified text</T></A></H>
<H><B><T>modified text</T></B></H>
<H><C><T>modified text</T></C></H>
</root>