Editing an attribute in an XML tag

Asked Jul 18 '16 at 23:42

Active Jul 18 '16 at 23:57

Viewed 31 times

I have been trying to locate and update certain attributes in am xml file. I am using lxml in python. I have tried the following: Assume country is an attribute of the tag address.

    frag_xml_tree = ET.parse(xml_name)
    root = frag_xml_tree.getroot()
    for elem in root.iter('address'):
                print elem.get('country')
                elem.set('country', "USA")
                print elem.get('country')

When I see the two print statements I see the update but I am not seeing the update in the actual xml file. Any help with this would be really appreciated.

I was able to figure out how to write the changes to a brand new xml but how can i edit the existing xml?

edited Jul 18 '16 at 23:57

Mehrzad Chehraz

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asked Jul 18 '16 at 23:42

user4500293

What language is this? – Scott Hunter Jul 18 '16 at 23:43
python. Sorry for the confusion. Let me edit the question – user4500293 Jul 18 '16 at 23:49
Did you actually write the changes?http://stackoverflow.com/questions/37533974/python-edit-xml-file/37534064#37534064 – Padraic Cunningham Jul 18 '16 at 23:52
I was able to figure out how to write the changes to a new file but not to the existing file. – user4500293 Jul 18 '16 at 23:54
You just overwrite the original file content, how else do you think file content gets changed? – Padraic Cunningham Jul 18 '16 at 23:55
I'll take a look at the link you provided. For some reason the code I posted in the question is duplicating the attribute instead of overwriting the value. Do you see anything wrong with the code I posted above? – user4500293 Jul 18 '16 at 23:59
Yes, you need to overwrite not add another attribute – Padraic Cunningham Jul 19 '16 at 00:02

Editing an attribute in an XML tag

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