Fix formatting of multiple xml files stored in folders?

Question

I have 50 folders that contain each one an xml file. The problem is that the formatting is supposed to be like:

<data> <items> <item name="item1_πα"></item> <item name="item2_πα"></item> <item name="item3_πα"></item> <item name="item4_πα"></item> </items> </data>

but is

b'<data>\n <items>51041<item name="item1_\xcf\x80\xce\xb1\xcf\x81\xce\xb1\xce\xb3\xcf\x89\xce\xb3\xce\xae"/>\n <item name="item2"/>\n <item name="item3"/>\n <item name="item4"/>\n </items>\n</data>\n\n'

can I modify them all with a loop and make them appear as they should?

something like this:

for i in os.listdir(r"C:\Users\user\Desktop\testin"): # <- here are the 50 folders with open('bac.xml', 'r'): # open each xml with open('bac.xml','w'): # write each xml formatted now example.writexml(file, indent='\n', addindent=' ',encoding = 'utf-8')

Note:All the xml files in each folder have the same name.

If you do print(name) you will see that the format of the string inside name is a good match for the example you present. For example, the linebreaks and indentation are what you expect, and you will see the first item name shown as <item name="item1_παραγωγή"/>. You have your data in a bytestring. If you just display a bytestring to the terminal, Python will show \x encodings for non-ascii characters. — BoarGules
– BoarGules, Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 8:28
so how to make it appear as you said and not likexcf\x80\xce\xb etc — user10190263
– user10190263, Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 8:31
This is an answer you've written that I can't make it work to my code: stackoverflow.com/a/44005629/9988562 What do you suggest to make it appear formatted when exported? — user10190263
– user10190263, Commented Aug 7, 2018 at 9:10

Gozy4 · Accepted Answer · 2018-08-07 08:52:59Z

0

The problem you have is probably with the decoding of the bytes: This thread has a solutuion. Basically you need to read the file as a byte (hence the 'rb', b for bytes) and then decode() it:

import os # this will get you all the subdirectories name = r"C:\Users\user\Desktop\testin" folders_list = [os.path.join(name, directory) for directory in os.listdir(name) if os.path.isdir(os.path.join(name,directory))] for folder in folders_list: #when you read the file: with open(folder+r'\bac.xml', 'rb') as f: your_file = f.read().decode() # if you need to write it anywhere else: with open(folder+r'\bac.xml', 'wb') as f: f.write(your_file.encode())

edited Aug 7, 2018 at 8:52

answered Aug 7, 2018 at 8:19

Gozy4

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7 Comments

user10190263 Over a year ago

how to do it in for loop through the folders I mentioned

Gozy4 Over a year ago

I don't understand one thing: are the data stored in the xml files formatted like

b'<data>\n <items>51041<item name="item1_\xcf\x80\xce\xb1\xcf\x81\xce\xb1\xce\xb3\xcf\x89\xce\xb3\xce\xae"/>\n <item name="item2"/>\n <item name="item3"/>\n <item name="item4"/>\n </items>\n</data>\n\n'

or are they already properly formatted but you get the format above while reading them?

user10190263 Over a year ago

the xml files are exported by my code and if I open the xml files with notepad they appear in one line. The fix I am searching is to make them formatted in a for loop.

Gozy4 Over a year ago

I don't know if i get what you need. I hope this helps.

user10190263 Over a year ago

And about the format fix ?this just reads and writes What do you suggest?Apparently it keeps the bad formatting. It needs to format it before writing. But how?

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