Question

This is the first time i am working with xml processing.

The following python list contains all the elements/nodes that will used to create the final xml.
Every item of the list is also a list composed of element/node and level pair.

For example:

[‘root’, 1]

‘root’ is the name of the element, and 1 is level or position of ‘root’ in the xml tree.

[
['root', 1],
['dir', 2],
['book1',3],
['chapter1', 4],
['page1', 5],
['page2', 5],
['book2', 3],
['book3', 3],
['author', 3]
]

Following is the xml corresponding to above list

<root>
  <dir>
    <book1>
      <chapter1>
        <page1 para=4>
        <page2 para=5>
      </chapter1>
    </book1>
    <book2 para=3/>
    <book3 para=3/>
    <author name=abc>
  </dir>
</root>

The problem i am facing is, i don’t know how to keep track of previous nodes so that new nodes are added into correct parent nodes?

For example:

should be added under

So during xml creation, after how to get/find parent node of so that child should be added at correct place?

Can anyone guide me to write a generic solution for this problem?

Answer 1

keep a “lastforlevel” array which stores the last item appended at a given level. If you try create an element for level n, you need to append it to lastforlevel[n-1].