Adding an element to XML with ElementTree

Question

I am attempting to add an element to some XML using ElementTree.

<device>
    <general>
        <item1>text</item1>
    </general>
</device>

I want to add <item2>text</item2> under general.

I tried

ElementTree.SubElement(xml, '/device/general/item2')
ElementTree.SubElement(xml, 'general/item2')

to add the field in but both added new lines at the end of the XML rather than adding inside the existing general element.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

No. I'm inside another Python module and only ElementTree is available to me — Tony Williams
– Tony Williams, Commented Jul 6, 2018 at 7:19

mzjn · Accepted Answer · 2018-07-06 07:22:36Z

1

The second argument to SubElement must be the name of a single element; it cannot be a "path" like general/item2. Get a reference to the general element and add a subelement to it.

from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET

tree = ET.parse("device.xml")

general = tree.find(".//general")
item2 = ET.SubElement(general, "item2")
item2.text = "text"

answered Jul 6, 2018 at 7:22

mzjn

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