I'm making a mod for a game where the majority of the files are XMLs, the text of which is Simplified Chinese. My goal is to replace all of the Simplified Chinese in the files with Traditional, followed by an English translation. I'm using the Cloud Translate API from Google to do that part, and it all works fine. At first I was just doing a find and replace on the Chinese text and then adding English to the end of string, but the issue with that is that I'm getting extra English translations whenever the Chinese text occurs more than once.
In an effort to fix that I read more of the XML documentation for Python, and I started trying to use tree.write, but that's where I'm getting stuck. When I use it, the XML file has the UTF codes for the Chinese characters, rather than the actual characters. If I open the file in a web browser, the characters render correctly, but at this point I'm just unsure if they'll still work with the game if they're not writing into the XML normally.
Here's an example XML I'm working with:
<Texts Type="Story">
<List>
<Text Name="TradeAuction">
<DisplayName>拍卖会</DisplayName>
<Desc>[NAME]来到了[PLACE]，发现此地有个拍卖行。</Desc>
<Selections.0.Display>参与拍卖</Selections.0.Display>
<Selections.1.Display>离去</Selections.1.Display>
</Text>
</List>
</Texts>
My code which works but sometimes duplicates English translations:
import lxml.etree as ET
from google.cloud import translate_v2 as translate
import pinyin
translator = translate.Client()
tgt = "zh-TW"
tt = "en"
with open('/home/dave/zh-TW-final/Settings/MapStories/MapStory_Auction.xml', 'r', encoding="utf-8") as f:
tree = ET.parse(f)
root = tree.getroot()
for elem in root.iter('Text'):
print(elem.text)
for child in elem:
txt = child.text
ttxt = translator.translate(txt, target_language=tgt)
etxt = translator.translate(txt, target_language=tt)
with open('/home/dave/zh-TW-final/Settings/MapStories/MapStory_Auction.xml', 'r') as n:
new = n.read().replace(txt, ttxt['translatedText'] + '(' + etxt['translatedText'] + ')', 1)
with open('/home/dave/zh-TW-final/Settings/MapStories/MapStory_Auction.xml', 'w') as n:
n.write(new)
The output of that looks like this:
<Texts Type="Story">
<List>
<Text Name="TradeAuction">
<DisplayName>拍賣會(auctions)</DisplayName>
<Desc>[NAME]來到了[PLACE]，發現此地有個拍賣行。([NAME] came to [PLACE] and found an auction house here.)</Desc>
<Selections.0.Display>參與拍賣(Participate in the auction)</Selections.0.Display>
<Selections.1.Display>離去(Leave)</Selections.1.Display>
</Text>
</List>
</Texts>
And here's my tree.write code:
import lxml.etree as ET
from google.cloud import translate_v2 as translate
import pinyin
translator = translate.Client()
tgt = "zh-TW"
tt = "en"
with open('/home/dave/zh-TW/Settings/MapStories/MapStory_Auction.xml', 'r', encoding="utf-8") as f:
tree = ET.parse(f)
root = tree.getroot()
for elem in root.iter('Text'):
print(elem.text)
for child in elem:
print(child.text)
txt = child.text
ttxt = translator.translate(txt, target_language=tgt)
etxt = translator.translate(txt, target_language=tt)
child.text = ttxt['translatedText'] + "(" + etxt['translatedText'] + ")"
tree.write('/home/dave/zh-TW-final/Settings/MapStories/MapStory_Auction.xml')
And the output from that looks like this:
<Texts Type="Story">
<List>
<Text Name="TradeAuction">
<DisplayName>拍賣會(auctions)</DisplayName>
<Desc>[NAME]來到了[PLACE]，發現此地有個拍賣行。([NAME] came to [PLACE] and found an auction house here.)</Desc>
<Selections.0.Display>參與拍賣(Participate in the auction)</Selections.0.Display>
<Selections.1.Display>離去(Leave)</Selections.1.Display>
</Text>
</List>
</Texts>
Any help would be appreciated. I think once I figure this out I should be able to fly through the rest of the translating.
tree.write('/home/dave/zh-TW-final/Settings/MapStories/MapStory_Auction.xml')
Per the documentation:
write(file, encoding="us-ascii", xml_declaration=None, default_namespace=None, method="xml", *, short_empty_elements=True)
...
The output is either a string (str) or binary (bytes). This is controlled by the encoding argument. If encoding is "unicode", the output is a string; otherwise, it’s binary. Note that this may conflict with the type of file if it’s an open file object; make sure you do not try to write a string to a binary stream and vice versa.
So we just need to set the encoding parameter appropriately. Writing as ASCII means that non-ASCII characters need to be entity-escaped (拍 etc.) (It still writes to the file without a problem, of course, because the UTF-8 encoding specified for the file is ASCII-transparent.)
I am generating an XML document in Python using an ElementTree, but the tostring function doesn't include an XML declaration when converting to plaintext.
from xml.etree.ElementTree import Element, tostring
document = Element('outer')
node = SubElement(document, 'inner')
node.NewValue = 1
print tostring(document) # Outputs "<outer><inner /></outer>"
I need my string to include the following XML declaration:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
However, there does not seem to be any documented way of doing this.
Is there a proper method for rendering the XML declaration in an ElementTree?
I am surprised to find that there doesn't seem to be a way with ElementTree.tostring(). You can however use ElementTree.ElementTree.write() to write your XML document to a fake file:
from io import BytesIO
from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET
document = ET.Element('outer')
node = ET.SubElement(document, 'inner')
et = ET.ElementTree(document)
f = BytesIO()
et.write(f, encoding='utf-8', xml_declaration=True)
print(f.getvalue()) # your XML file, encoded as UTF-8
See this question. Even then, I don't think you can get your 'standalone' attribute without writing prepending it yourself.
I would use lxml (see http://lxml.de/api.html).
Then you can:
from lxml import etree
document = etree.Element('outer')
node = etree.SubElement(document, 'inner')
print(etree.tostring(document, xml_declaration=True))
If you include the encoding='utf8', you will get an XML header:
xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring writes a XML encoding declaration with encoding='utf8'
Sample Python code (works with Python 2 and 3):
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ElementTree
tree = ElementTree.ElementTree(
ElementTree.fromstring('<xml><test>123</test></xml>')
)
root = tree.getroot()
print('without:')
print(ElementTree.tostring(root, method='xml'))
print('')
print('with:')
print(ElementTree.tostring(root, encoding='utf8', method='xml'))
Python 2 output:
$ python2 example.py
without:
<xml><test>123</test></xml>
with:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf8'?>
<xml><test>123</test></xml>
With Python 3 you will note the b prefix indicating byte literals are returned (just like with Python 2):
$ python3 example.py
without:
b'<xml><test>123</test></xml>'
with:
b"<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf8'?>\n<xml><test>123</test></xml>"
xml_declaration Argument
Is there a proper method for rendering the XML declaration in an ElementTree?
YES, and there is no need of using .tostring function. According to ElementTree Documentation, you should create an ElementTree object, create Element and SubElements, set the tree's root, and finally use xml_declaration argument in .write function, so the declaration line is included in output file.
You can do it this way:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
tree = ET.ElementTree("tree")
document = ET.Element("outer")
node1 = ET.SubElement(document, "inner")
node1.text = "text"
tree._setroot(document)
tree.write("./output.xml", encoding = "UTF-8", xml_declaration = True)
And the output file is:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<outer><inner>text</inner></outer>
I encounter this issue recently, after some digging of the code, I found the following code snippet is definition of function ElementTree.write
def write(self, file, encoding="us-ascii"):
assert self._root is not None
if not hasattr(file, "write"):
file = open(file, "wb")
if not encoding:
encoding = "us-ascii"
elif encoding != "utf-8" and encoding != "us-ascii":
file.write("<?xml version='1.0' encoding='%s'?>\n" %
encoding)
self._write(file, self._root, encoding, {})
So the answer is, if you need write the XML header to your file, set the encoding argument other than utf-8 or us-ascii, e.g. UTF-8
Easy
Sample for both Python 2 and 3 (encoding parameter must be utf8):
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ElementTree
tree = ElementTree.ElementTree(ElementTree.fromstring('<xml><test>123</test></xml>'))
root = tree.getroot()
print(ElementTree.tostring(root, encoding='utf8', method='xml'))
From Python 3.8 there is xml_declaration parameter for that stuff:
New in version 3.8: The xml_declaration and default_namespace
parameters.
xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring(element, encoding="us-ascii",
method="xml", *, xml_declaration=None, default_namespace=None,
short_empty_elements=True) Generates a string representation of an XML
element, including all subelements. element is an Element instance.
encoding 1 is the output encoding (default is US-ASCII). Use
encoding="unicode" to generate a Unicode string (otherwise, a
bytestring is generated). method is either "xml", "html" or "text"
(default is "xml"). xml_declaration, default_namespace and
short_empty_elements has the same meaning as in ElementTree.write().
Returns an (optionally) encoded string containing the XML data.
Sample for Python 3.8 and higher:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ElementTree
tree = ElementTree.ElementTree(ElementTree.fromstring('<xml><test>123</test></xml>'))
root = tree.getroot()
print(ElementTree.tostring(root, encoding='unicode', method='xml', xml_declaration=True))
The minimal working example with ElementTree package usage:
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
document = ET.Element('outer')
node = ET.SubElement(document, 'inner')
node.text = '1'
res = ET.tostring(document, encoding='utf8', method='xml').decode()
print(res)
the output is:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf8'?>
<outer><inner>1</inner></outer>
Another pretty simple option is to concatenate the desired header to the string of xml like this:
xml = (bytes('<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>\n', encoding='utf-8') + ET.tostring(root))
xml = xml.decode('utf-8')
with open('invoice.xml', 'w+') as f:
f.write(xml)
I would use ET:
try:
from lxml import etree
print("running with lxml.etree")
except ImportError:
try:
# Python 2.5
import xml.etree.cElementTree as etree
print("running with cElementTree on Python 2.5+")
except ImportError:
try:
# Python 2.5
import xml.etree.ElementTree as etree
print("running with ElementTree on Python 2.5+")
except ImportError:
try:
# normal cElementTree install
import cElementTree as etree
print("running with cElementTree")
except ImportError:
try:
# normal ElementTree install
import elementtree.ElementTree as etree
print("running with ElementTree")
except ImportError:
print("Failed to import ElementTree from any known place")
document = etree.Element('outer')
node = etree.SubElement(document, 'inner')
print(etree.tostring(document, encoding='UTF-8', xml_declaration=True))
This works if you just want to print. Getting an error when I try to send it to a file...
import xml.dom.minidom as minidom
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
from xml.etree.ElementTree import Element, SubElement, Comment, tostring
def prettify(elem):
rough_string = ET.tostring(elem, 'utf-8')
reparsed = minidom.parseString(rough_string)
return reparsed.toprettyxml(indent=" ")
Including 'standalone' in the declaration
I didn't found any alternative for adding the standalone argument in the documentation so I adapted the ET.tosting function to take it as an argument.
from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET
# Sample
document = ET.Element('outer')
node = ET.SubElement(document, 'inner')
et = ET.ElementTree(document)
# Function that you need
def tostring(element, declaration, encoding=None, method=None,):
class dummy:
pass
data = []
data.append(declaration+"\n")
file = dummy()
file.write = data.append
ET.ElementTree(element).write(file, encoding, method=method)
return "".join(data)
# Working example
xdec = """<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>"""
xml = tostring(document, encoding='utf-8', declaration=xdec)
I am trying to parse an xml file(containing bad characters) using lxml module in recover = True mode.
Below is the code snippet
from lxml import etree
f=open('test.xml')
data=f.read()
f.close()
parser = etree.XMLParser(recover=True)
x = etree.fromstring(data, parser=parser)
Now I want to create another xml file (test1.xml) from the above object (x)
Could anyone please help in this matter.
Thanks
I think this is what you are searching for
from lxml import etree
# opening the source file
with open('test.xml','r') as f:
# reading the number
data=f.read()
parser = etree.XMLParser(recover=True)
# fromstring() parses XML from a string directly into an Element
x = etree.fromstring(data, parser=parser)
# taking the content retrieved
y = etree.tostring(x, pretty_print=True).decode("utf-8")
# writing the content on the output file
with open('test1.xml','w') as f:
f.write(y)
I'm batch-converting a lot of XML files, changing their character encodings to UTF-8:
with open(source_filename, "rb") as source:
tree = etree.parse(source)
with open(destination_filename, "wb") as destination:
tree.write(destination, encoding="UTF-8", xml_declaration=True)
Unfortunately, it is destroying my CDATA sections and just escaping them instead.
Source:
<d><![CDATA[áÌÀøÅàùÑÄéú ëÌÄé áÈàÅùÑ éäå''ä ðÄùÑÀôÌÈè <small><small>(ùí ëå èæ)</small></small>
Destination:
<d>בְּרֵאשִׁית כִּי בָאֵשׁ יהו''ה נִשְׁפָּט <small><small>(שם כו טז)</small></small>
Is there a setting which I can set which will tell it to leave my CDATA sections alone? I'm mainly using LXML to change the character encoding and to write the XML header properly.
Use the strip_cdata=False option:
import lxml.etree as etree
parser = etree.XMLParser(strip_cdata=False)
with open(source_filename, "rb") as source:
tree = etree.parse(source, parser=parser)
I'm parsing an xml file using the code below:
import lxml
file_name = input('Enter the file name, including .xml extension: ')
print('Parsing ' + file_name)
from lxml import etree
parser = lxml.etree.XMLParser()
tree = lxml.etree.parse(file_name, parser)
root = tree.getroot()
nsmap = {'xmlns': 'urn:tva:metadata:2010'}
with open(file_name+'.log', 'w', encoding='utf-8') as f:
for info in root.xpath('//xmlns:ProgramInformation', namespaces=nsmap):
crid = (info.get('programId'))
titlex = (info.find('.//xmlns:Title', namespaces=nsmap))
title = (titlex.text if titlex != None else 'Missing')
synopsis1x = (info.find('.//xmlns:Synopsis[1]', namespaces=nsmap))
synopsis1 = (synopsis1x.text if synopsis1x != None else 'Missing')
synopsis1 = synopsis1.replace('\r','').replace('\n','')
f.write('{}|{}|{}\n'.format(crid, title, synopsis1))
Let take an example title of 'Přešité bydlení'. If I print the title whilst parsing the file, it comes out as expected. When I write it out however, it displays as 'PÅ™eÅ¡ité bydlenÃ'.
I understand that this is do to with encoding (as I was able to change the print command to use UTF-8, and 'corrupt' the output), but I couldn't get the written output to print as I desired. I had a look at the codecs library, but couldn't wasn't successful. Having 'encoding = "utf-8"' in the XML Parser line didn't make any difference.
How can I configure the written output to be human readable?
I had all sorts of troubles with this before. But the solution is rather simple. There is a chapter on how to read and write in unicode to a file in the documentation. This Python talk is also very enlightening to understand the issue. Unicode can be a pain. It gets a lot easier if you start using python 3 though.
import codecs
f = codecs.open('test', encoding='utf-8', mode='w+')
f.write(u'\u4500 blah blah blah\n')
f.seek(0)
print repr(f.readline()[:1])
f.close()
Your code looks ok, so I reckon your input is duff. Assuming you're viewing your output file with a UTF-8 viewer or shell then I suspect that the encoding in the <?xml doesn't match the actual encoding.
This would explain why printing works but not writing to a file. If your shell/IDE is set to "ISO-8859-2" and your input XML is also "ISO-8859-2" then printing is pushing out the raw encoding.