Elementtree - Issue In Appending The Subelement To An Element

I want to create subelement to an element that comes next to the element country singapore here. Suppose my test.xml file looks like this

Solution 1:

Here is how it can be done with ElementTree.

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

root = ET.parse("country.xml").getroot()

# A list of all children of the root element (in document order)
children = list(root)

# Find the Singapore 'country' element
sing = root.find(".//country/[@name='Singapore']")

# Get the index of the 'country' element 
ix = children.index(sing)

# Find the wanted 'district' sibling element (position ix+1 in the list)
district = children[ix+1]

# Create a new 't1' element and add to 'district'
t1 = ET.Element("t1", name="t1")
district.insert(0, t1)

print(ET.tostring(root).decode("UTF-8"))

Output:

<data><countryname="Malaysia"tst="bh"><year>2008</year><gdppc>141100</gdppc><neighbordirection="E"name="Singapore" /><neighbordirection="W"name="Switzerland" /></country><district><Aname="test"></A></district><countryname="Singapore"tst="ab"><rankupdated="yes">5</rank><year>2011</year><gdppc>59900</gdppc><neighbordirection="N"name="Malaysia" /></country><district><t1name="t1" /><Bname="test"><!-- New element added here --></B></district></data>

Solution 2:

What you are trying to attempt is not possible, as no below or above exists in XML. The data in XML is unordered. If you want to create a relation between country and district, you can ether add a Country Attribute to the District Element:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><data><countryname="Malaysia"tst="bh"><year>2008</year><gdppc>141100</gdppc><neighborname="Singapore"direction="E"/><neighborname="Switzerland"direction="W"/></country><districtcountry="Malaysia"><Aname="test"></A></district><countryname="Singapore"tst="ab"><rankupdated="yes">5</rank><year>2011</year><gdppc>59900</gdppc><neighborname="Malaysia"direction="N"/></country><districtcountry="Singaporse"><Bname="test"></B></district></data>


import xml.etree.ElementTree as et    
tree = et.parse("test.xml")
root = tree.getroot()    
district = root.find(".//district[@country='Singapore']")    
et.subelement(district,"add new subelement")

Or make the district element a child of the country element:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><data><countryname="Malaysia"tst="bh"><year>2008</year><gdppc>141100</gdppc><neighborname="Singapore"direction="E"/><neighborname="Switzerland"direction="W"/><district><Aname="test"/></district></country><countryname="Singapore"tst="ab"><rankupdated="yes">5</rank><year>2011</year><gdppc>59900</gdppc><neighborname="Malaysia"direction="N"/><districtcountry="Singaporse"><Bname="test"/></district></country></data>


import xml.etree.ElementTree as et    
tree = et.parse("test.xml")
root = tree.getroot()    
district = root.find(".//country[@name='Singapore']/district")    
et.subelement(district,"add new subelement")

Edit: added python code

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