On Wed, Nov 18, 2009 at 4:55 AM, Thomas Lotze <tho...@thomas-lotze.de> wrote: > I wonder what Python XML library is best for writing a program that makes > small modifications to an XML file in a minimally intrusive way. By that I > mean that information the program doesn't recognize is kept, as are > comments and whitespace, the order of attributes and even whitespace > around attributes. In short, I want to be able to change an XML file while > producing minimal textual diffs. > > Most libraries don't allow controlling the order of and the whitespace > around attributes, so what's generally left to do is store snippets of > original text along with the model objects and re-use that for writing the > edited XML if the model wasn't modified by the program. Does a library > exist that helps with this? Does any XML library at all allow structured > access to the text representation of a tag with its attributes?
Have you considered using an XML-specific diff tool such as: * One off this list: http://www.manageability.org/blog/stuff/open-source-xml-diff-in-java * xmldiff (it's in Python even): http://www.logilab.org/859 * diffxml: http://diffxml.sourceforge.net/ [Note: I haven't actually used any of these.] Cheers, Chris -- http://blog.rebertia.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
