Creating a simple XML file using python

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These days, the most popular (and very simple) option is the ElementTree API, which has been included in the standard library since Python 2.5. The available options for that are:

  • ElementTree (Basic, pure-Python implementation of ElementTree. Part of the standard library since 2.5)
  • cElementTree (Optimized C implementation of ElementTree. Also offered in the standard library since 2.5)
  • LXML (Based on libxml2. Offers a a rich superset of the ElementTree API as well XPath, CSS Selectors, and more)

Example

import xml.etree.cElementTree as ET

root = ET.Element("root")

doc = ET.SubElement(root, "person")

field1 = ET.SubElement(doc, "person1")
field1.set("name", "First Name")
field1.text = "John"

field2 = ET.SubElement(doc, "person2")
field2.set("name", "First Name")
field2.text = "charles"

tree = ET.ElementTree(root)
tree.write("anyFile.xml")

Output (anyFile.xml)

<root>
	<person>
		<person1 name="First Name">John</person1>
		<person2 name="First Name">charles</person2>
	</person>
</root>