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pythonlibxml2removechild

python libXML2 remove Item

I am using libxml2 under python. Unfortunatly the python version of this library is really badly documented and i founded just few example on the web from there i could understand some of the method.

I managed the add a soon te a XML Node. Since this element should replace an existing one I would like to remove the previos one before but i could not find which is the method to remove a child.

Does anyone know what is the method name? does anyone have a decent documentation about this library?

Cheers

Solution

  • You can use the unlinkNode() method to remove a given node. In general, most of the methods that apply to nodes are documented, try:

    pydoc libxml2.xmlNode

    For unlinkNode, the documentation says:

    unlinkNode(self)
    Unlink a node from it's current context, the node is not
    freed

    For example, given this input:

    <html>
  <head>
    <title>Document Title</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <div id="content">This is a test.</div>
  </body>
</html>

    You can parse the file like this:

    >>> import libxml2
>>> doc = libxml2.parseFile('input.html')

    Locate the <div> node like this:

    >>> node = doc.xpathEval('//*[@id="content"])[0]

    And remove it like this:

    >>> node.unlinkNode()

    And now if you print out the document, you get this:

    >>> print doc
<head>            
    <title>Document Title</title>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>