Reading and Writing XML Files in Python: Easy as Pie

Master the Art of Parsing, Manipulating, and Creating XML Documents Using Python’s xml.etree Module

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XML documents remain popular choices for exchanging information due to their hierarchical structure, flexibility, and simplicity. Fortunately, Python makes reading and writing XML files accessible via the versatile xml.etree library.

In this tutorial, we will cover key aspects of parsing, modifying, and generating XML files using Python.

Prerequisites

Before diving into the subject matter, make sure to install Python on your machine. If needed, download and install an appropriate distribution from https://www.python.org/downloads/. Once installed, launch your preferred text editor or IDE and begin exploring XML file processing in Python.

Parsing XML Files

Suppose we have the following XML document stored in example.xml:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
    <element attr="value">Text content</element>
</root>

We will parse this XML file using Python’s xml.etree.ElementTree module. First, import the necessary libraries and load the XML data: