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pythonxmlantxml-parsingminidom

Commenting and uncommenting XML via Python

I would like to know of a way to comment and uncomment an element in XML using Python. 

<target depends="create-build-dir" name="build-Folio">
   <property name="project.name" value="Folio"/>
   <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/FolioUI" inheritall="false" target="package"/>
   <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/Folio" inheritall="false" target="package"/>
</target>

How can I get it to look like this:

<target depends="create-build-dir" name="build-Folio">
   <property name="project.name" value="Folio"/>
   <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/FolioUI" inheritall="false" target="deploy"/>
   <!-- <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/Folio" inheritall="false" target="deploy"/> -->
</target>

and then remove the comments again as needed... or

I am using minidom from xml.dom. Do I need to use a different XML parser? Would prefer to avoid using regex... that would be a nightmare.

Solution

  • The script below uses xml.dom.minidom and includes functions for both commenting and uncommenting nodes:

    from xml.dom import minidom

xml = """\
<target depends="create-build-dir" name="build-Folio">
   <property name="project.name" value="Folio"/>
   <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/FolioUI" inheritall="false" target="package"/>
   <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/Folio" inheritall="false" target="package"/>
</target>
"""

def comment_node(node):
    comment = node.ownerDocument.createComment(node.toxml())
    node.parentNode.replaceChild(comment, node)
    return comment

def uncomment_node(comment):
    node = minidom.parseString(comment.data).firstChild
    comment.parentNode.replaceChild(node, comment)
    return node

doc = minidom.parseString(xml).documentElement

comment_node(doc.getElementsByTagName('ant')[-1])

xml = doc.toxml()

print 'comment_node():\n'
print xml
print

doc = minidom.parseString(xml).documentElement

comment = doc.lastChild.previousSibling

print 're-parsed comment:\n'
print comment.toxml()
print

uncomment_node(comment)

print 'uncomment_node():\n'
print doc.toxml()
print

    Output:

    comment_node():

<target depends="create-build-dir" name="build-Folio">
   <property name="project.name" value="Folio"/>
   <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/FolioUI" inheritall="false" target="package"/>
   <!--<ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/Folio" inheritall="false" target="package"/>-->
</target>

re-parsed comment:

<!--<ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/Folio" inheritall="false" target="package"/>-->

uncomment_node():

<target depends="create-build-dir" name="build-Folio">
   <property name="project.name" value="Folio"/>
   <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/FolioUI" inheritall="false" target="package"/>
   <ant antfile="build.xml" dir="Folio/Folio" inheritall="false" target="package"/>
</target>