pretty_print in etree.tostring() xml python

Question

I am trying to print out the xml doc with pretty_print option. But it thew an error

TypeError: tostring() got an unexpected keyword argument 'pretty_print'

Am I missing something here?

def CreateXML2():
    Date = etree.Element("Date", value=time.strftime(time_format, time.localtime()));
    UserNode = etree.SubElement(Date, "User");
    IDNode = etree.SubElement(UserNode, "ID");
    print(etree.tostring(Date, pretty_print=True));

Are you sure you are using `lxml.etree` (`lxml` library) and not `xml.etree.ElementTree` (the built-in `ElementTree` Python library)? The former has a `pretty_print` argument, but the latter does not. — Francis Avila, Mar 07 '12 at 23:11
I used xml.etree not lxml. So the xml.etree does not have pretty_print in its etree.tostring()?? — Nogcas, Mar 08 '12 at 04:22
No, it does not. Read [the documentation](http://docs.python.org/library/xml.etree.elementtree.html#xml.etree.ElementTree.tostring), or even just run `help(etree.tostring)` in a console. — Francis Avila, Mar 08 '12 at 04:47
Does this answer your question? [Pretty printing XML in Python](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/749796/pretty-printing-xml-in-python) — outis, Jul 01 '21 at 22:44

jcollado · Answer 1 · 2019-08-09T14:04:25.223

3

It seems that the problem is that ElementTree library doesn't support pretty printing. A workaround, as explained here is to reparse the output string from ElementTree in another library that provides support for pretty printing.

edited Aug 09 '19 at 14:04

answered Mar 07 '12 at 23:12

jcollado

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@mastashake57 Oh, yes, there are a lot of race conditions in this site. – jcollado Mar 07 '12 at 23:16
The link is not working for me, is it working for someone? – user9869932 Aug 09 '19 at 13:51

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:07

Have you looked at this post within StackOverflow? I think it covers what you want:

in-place prettyprint formatter

def indent(elem, level=0):
    i = "\n" + level*"  "
    if len(elem):
        if not elem.text or not elem.text.strip():
            elem.text = i + "  "
        if not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip():
            elem.tail = i
        for elem in elem:
            indent(elem, level+1)
        if not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip():
            elem.tail = i
    else:
        if level and (not elem.tail or not elem.tail.strip()):
            elem.tail = i

That sample code was from the post and from effbot.org

Also, for additional information, you're not calling the tostring() method properly. Have a look at Python's website for more information.

pretty_print in etree.tostring() xml python

2 Answers2

in-place prettyprint formatter