xmlutils.py is a set of Python utilities for processing xml files serially, namely converting them to other formats (SQL, CSV, JSON). The scripts use ElementTree.iterparse() to iterate through nodes in an XML file, thus not needing to load the whole DOM into memory. The scripts can be used to churn through large XML files (albeit taking long :P) without memory hiccups.
Blind conversion of XML to CSV and SQL is not recommended. It only works if the structure of the XML document is simple (flat). On the other hand, xml2json supports complex XML documents with multiple nested hierarchies. Lastly, the XML files are not validated at the time of conversion.
- Kailash Nadh, June 2013
- License: MIT License
- Documentation: http://nadh.in/code/xmlutils.py
- Pypi: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/xmlutils
#Installation With pip or easy_install
pip install xmlutils or easy_install xmlutils
Or from the source
python setup.py install
#Commandline utilities Once the package is installed, the three bundled commandline utilities should be available from the terminal.
##xml2csv Convert an XML document to a CSV file.
xml2csv --input "samples/fruits.xml" --output "samples/fruits.csv" --tag "item"
######Arguments
--input Input XML document's filename*
--output Output CSV file's filename*
--tag The tag of the node that represents a single record (Eg: item, record)*
--delimiter Delimiter for seperating items in a row. Default is , (a comma followed by a space)
--ignore A space separated list of element tags in the XML document to ignore.
--header Whether to print the CSV header (list of fields) in the first line; 1=yes, 0=no. Default is 1.
--encoding Character encoding of the document. Default is utf-8
--limit Limit the number of records to be processed from the document to a particular number. Default is no limit (-1)
--buffer The number of records to be kept in memory before it is written to the output CSV file. Helps reduce the number of disk writes. Default is 1000.
##xml2sql Convert an XML document to an SQL file.
xml2sql --input "samples/fruits.xml" --output "samples/fruits.sql" --tag "item" --table "myfruits"
######Arguments
tag -- the record tag. eg: item
table -- table name
ignore -- list of tags to ignore
limit -- maximum number of records to process
packet -- maximum size of an insert query in MB (MySQL's max_allowed_packet)
Returns:
{ num: number of records converted,
num_insert: number of sql insert statements generated
}
##xml2json Convert XML to JSON. xml2json supports hierarchies nested to any number of levels.
xml2json --input "samples/fruits.xml" --output "samples/fruits.sql"
#Modules
##xmlutils.xml2sql
from xmlutils.xml2sql import xml2sql
converter = xml2sql("samples/fruits.xml", "samples/fruits.sql", encoding="utf-8")
converter.convert(tag="item", table="table")######Arguments
tag -- the record tag. eg: item
table -- table name
ignore -- list of tags to ignore
limit -- maximum number of records to process
packet -- maximum size of an insert query in MB (MySQL's max_allowed_packet)
Returns:
{ num: number of records converted,
num_insert: number of sql insert statements generated
}
##xmlutils.xml2csv
from xmlutils.xml2csv import xml2csv
converter = xml2csv("samples/fruits.xml", "samples/fruits.sql", encoding="utf-8")
converter.convert(tag="item")######Arguments
tag -- the record tag. eg: item
delimiter -- csv field delimiter
ignore -- list of tags to ignore
limit -- maximum number of records to process
buffer -- number of records to keep in buffer before writing to disk
Returns:
number of records converted
##xmlutils.xml2json
from xmlutils.xml2json import xml2json
converter = xml2json("samples/fruits.xml", "samples/fruits.sql", encoding="utf-8")
converter.convert()
# to get a json string
converter = xml2json("samples/fruits.xml", encoding="utf-8")
print converter.get_json()######Arguments
pretty -- pretty print?