Question

I’m learning how to parse CSV files and format the data into XML files using ElementTree and minidom (for pretty printing). I’ve gotten so close, but hit one little snag that I can’t seem to wrap my head around. I have the following code:

for csvFile in directory:
    root = Element('Order')
    with open(csvFile, 'rt') as f:
        reader = csv.reader(f)
        for row in reader:
            queue = row[0]
            token = row[1]
            current_order = SubElement(root, 'Token', {'text':token})
            details = SubElement(current_order, 'Queue',
                                 {'queue':queue})

    print prettify(root)

Which produces the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<Order>
  <Token text="token">
    <Queue queue="site_code"/>
  </Token>
  <Token text="H54FC9">
    <Queue queue="Duplex_N-up"/>
  </Token>
</Order>

How can I strip the headers from the CSV input so that the XML looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<Order>
  <Token text="H54FC9">
    <Queue queue="Duplex_N-up"/>
  </Token>
</Order>

Thank you!

Answer 1

Are you looking to discard the first line from your csv file? If so, you can do that pretty easily:

for csvFile in directory:
    root = Element('Order')
    with open(csvFile, 'rt') as f:
        junk = next(f)         #read the first line, don't do anything with it.
        reader = csv.reader(f)
        for row in reader:
            queue = row[0]
            token = row[1]
            current_order = SubElement(root, 'Token', {'text':token})
            details = SubElement(current_order, 'Queue',
                                 {'queue':queue})

    print prettify(root)