Python XML processing with lxml

First import the lxml package. Here is one way:

from lxml import etree

Create the root element. For example, suppose you're creating a Web page; the root element is html. Use the etree.Element() constructor to build that element.

page = etree.Element ( 'html' )

Next, use the etree.ElementTree() constructor to make a new document tree, using our html element as its root:

doc = etree.ElementTree ( page )

The etree.SubElement() constructor is perfect for adding new child elements to our document. Here's the code to add a head element, and then a body as element, as new children of the html element:

headElt = etree.SubElement ( page, 'head' )
bodyElt = etree.SubElement ( page, 'body' )

Your page will need a title element child under the head element. Add text to this element by storing a string in its .text attribute:

title = etree.SubElement ( headElt, 'title' )
title.text = 'Your page title here'

To supply attribute values, use keyword arguments to the SubElement() constructor. For example, suppose you want a stylesheet link inside the head element that looks like this:

  <link rel='stylesheet' href='mystyle.css' type='text/css'>

This code would do it:

linkElt = etree.SubElement ( headElt, 'link', rel='stylesheet',
    href='mystyle.css', type='text/css' )

Continue building your new document using the various functions described in Section 6, “Features of the etree module” and Section 8, “class Element: One element in the tree”.

When the document is completely built, write it to a file using the ElementTree instance's .write() method, which takes a file argument.

outFile = open ( 'homemade.xml' )
doc.write ( outFile )