Question

The script will generate multiple files using the year and id variable. These files need to be placed into a folder matching year and id. How do I write them to the correct folders?

file_root_name = row["file_root_name"]
year = row["year"]
id = row["id"]
path = year+'-'+id
try:
    os.makedirs(path)
except:
    pass
output = open(row['file_root_name']+'.smil', 'w')
output.write(prettify(doctype, root))

Answer 1

If I understand your question correctly, you want to do this:

import os.path
file_name = row['file_root_name']+'.smil'
full_path = os.path.join(path, file_name)
output = open(full_path, 'w')

Please note that it’s not very common in Python to use the + operator for string concatenation. Although not in your case, with large strings the method is not very fast.
I’d prefer:

file_name = '%s.smil' % row['file_root_name']

and:

path = '%i-%i' % (year, id)