Python print xml tree structure

Hi,

I have a large multi-level XML document of a complicated structure, without any namespace definition.
I would like to generate a simplified tree view of its structure, so that every possible element from the XML is shown and only once.

As a simplified example take this XML:

	...
	
		
			...
			...
		
		
			...
			...
			
		
		
			...
			...
			
			
				...
				...
				...
						
		
	
	
		
			...
			...
			...
			
		
		
			...
			...
			...
		
	

Using Python I would like to generate a view of its structure, looking something like this:

-data-
	-timestamp-
	-people-
		-person-
			-name-
			-age-
			-degree-
			-siblings-
				-brother-
				-sister-
	-cities-
		-city-
			-name-
			-country-
			-continent-
			-capital-

So, basically I am not interested in the values, or how many elements of the same type are in the XML, etc.
I only want to see which elements are in there.

I know there might be visual tools to achieve this, but I need to be able to generate such tree view also directly inside python script.

Thanks for any ideas.

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lxml has etree (prettyprint option) see: http://lxml.de/api.html

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prettyprint does not help me as it shows everything as is in the XML. That's exactly what I want to avoid. I need no duplicates and no values or attributes. Only the very basic tree structure.

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You can look here to see what's available as packages: https://pypi.python.org/pypi?%3Aaction=s...mit=search
You may have to write it yourself, it you can't find what you're looking for

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Just getting name of tags work fine in both lxml and BeautifulSoup.
Keeping the structure in output can be a challenge,
as both pretty print()lxml and prettify()BS i do not think work for text output.

Example getting tag names:

from lxml import etree
from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

xml = '''\

    ...
    
        
            ...
            ...
        
        
            ...
            ...
            
        
        
            ...
            ...
            
            
                ...
                ...
                ...
            
        
    
    
        
            ...
            ...
            ...
            
        
        
            ...
            ...
            ...
        
    

'''

root = etree.fromstring(xml)
soup = BeautifulSoup(xml, 'lxml')

# lxml
for node in root.iter('*'):
    print(node.tag)

# BS
for tag in soup.findChildren():
    print(tag.name)

Output:
data
timestamp
people
person
name
age
person
name
age
degree
person
name
age
degree
siblings
brother
brother
sister
cities
city
name
country
continent
capital
city
name
country
continent

wavic
So-and-so of the Yard

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Pretty straight away:

from lxml import etree
from collections import Counter

xml = '''\

    ...
    
        
            ...
            ...
        
        
            ...
            ...
            
        
        
            ...
            ...
            
            
                ...
                ...
                ...
            
        
    
    
        
            ...
            ...
            ...
            
        
        
            ...
            ...
            ...
        
    

'''

root = etree.fromstring(xml)

for tag in root.iter():
    path = tree.getpath(tag)
    path = path.replace('/', '    ')
    spaces = Counter(path)
    tag_name = path.split()[-1].split('[')[0]
    tag_name = ' ' * (spaces[' '] - 4) + tag_name
    print(tag_name)

Output:
data
    timestamp
    people
        person
            name
            age
        person
            name
            age
            degree
        person
            name
            age
            degree
            siblings
                brother
                brother
                sister
    cities
        city
            name
            country
            continent
            capital
        city
            name
            country
            continent

wavic
So-and-so of the Yard

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I have missed to put tree = etree.ElementTree(root) before the for loop

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Thanks to all of you for the tips!
They helped me to achieve my goal.

wavic - My aim was to have no duplicates, so your code was almost perfect, but I reworked it a bit also to include the attributes.

Here is my final code in case it helps somebody else as well.
I will use it any time I need to see clearly the structure of any XML file, to know all tags/attributes which I need to consider.

import re, collections
from lxml import etree
 
xml = '''\

    not important
    
        
            not important
            not important
        
        
            not important
            not important
            
        
        
            not important
            not important
            not important
            
            
                not important
                not important
                not important
            
        
    
    
        
            not important
            not important
            
        
        
            not important
            not important
            
            	1996
            	summer
            
        
    

'''

xml_root = etree.fromstring(xml)
raw_tree = etree.ElementTree(xml_root)
nice_tree = collections.OrderedDict()

for tag in xml_root.iter():
	path = re.sub('\[[0-9]+\]', '', raw_tree.getpath(tag))
	if path not in nice_tree:
		nice_tree[path] = []
	if len(tag.keys()) > 0:
		nice_tree[path].extend(attrib for attrib in tag.keys() if attrib not in nice_tree[path])			

for path, attribs in nice_tree.items():
	indent = int(path.count('/') - 1)
	print('{0}{1}: {2} [{3}]'.format('    ' * indent, indent, path.split('/')[-1], ', '.join(attribs) if len(attribs) > 0 else '-'))

Which gives me following result:

Output:
0: data [-]
    1: timestamp [-]
    1: people [-]
        2: person [name, given, maiden]
            3: occupation [fulltime]
            3: age [-]
            3: degree [-]
            3: birthday [-]
            3: siblings [-]
                4: brother [attrib1, attrib2]
                4: sister [-]
    1: cities [-]
        2: city [name]
            3: country [-]
            3: continent [-]
            3: capital [-]
            3: olympics [count]
                4: year [-]
                4: season [-]

wavic
So-and-so of the Yard

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Good! At first, I was thinking that this will be a difficult task but it seems that xpath is of great help.

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Aug-12-2020, 08:51 AM (This post was last modified: Aug-12-2020, 08:51 AM by mreshko.)

Hi sonicblind.

Great code! Very useful. Thank you.

It would be great if you could add these two feature to the code:

(1) show the child's' number after the level, e.g.
3.0: occupation [fulltime]
3.1: age [-]
3.2: degree [-]
3.3: birthday [-]
3.4: siblings [-]

(2) show the number of identical siblings, for example, if there were, say, 100 "person" elements, it would
display it as
2: person [name, given, maiden] [100]

Many thanks

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