Question

I have a sample xml file like this:

<root>
   She
   <opt>went</opt>
   <opt>didn't go</opt>
   to school.
</root>

I want to create a subelement named of , and put all the contents of into it. That is,

<root>
   <sentence>
       She
       <opt>went</opt>
       <opt>didn't go</opt>
       to school.
   </sentence>
</root>

I know hot to make a subelement with ElementTree or lxml, but I have no idea of how to select from “She” to “shools.” all at once.

import lxml.etree as ET
ET.SubElement(root, 'sentence')
I'm lost...

Answer 1

You could go about it in reverse: (Instead of adding a subelement, add a new parent.) By that I mean, change the root tag to sentence, create a new root element, and insert the old root (now sentence) into the new root:

import lxml.etree as ET

content = '''\
<root>
   She
   <opt>went</opt>
   <opt>didn't go</opt>
   to school.
</root>'''

root = ET.fromstring(content)
root.tag = 'sentence'
newroot = ET.Element('root')
newroot.insert(0,root)
print(ET.tostring(newroot))

# <root><sentence>
#    She
#    <opt>went</opt>
#    <opt>didn't go</opt>
#    to school.
# </sentence></root>