How to write an XML file without header in Python?

Question

when using Python's stock XML tools such as xml.dom.minidom for XML writing, a file would always start off like

<?xml version="1.0"?>

[...]

While this is perfectly legal XML code, and it's even recommended to use the header, I'd like to get rid of it as one of the programs I'm working with has problems here.

I can't seem to find the appropriate option in xml.dom.minidom, so I wondered if there are other packages which do allow to neglect the header.

Cheers,

Nico

Answer 1

Purists may not like to hear this, but I have found using an XML parser to generate XML to be overkill. Just generate it directly as strings. This also lets you generate files larger than you can keep in memory, which you can't do with DOM. Reading XML is another story.

Answer 2

If you want to use minidom and maintain 'prettiness', how about this as a quick/hacky fix:

xml_without_declaration.py:

import xml.dom.minidom as xml

doc = xml.Document()

declaration = doc.toxml()

a = doc.createElement("A")
doc.appendChild(a)
b = doc.createElement("B")
a.appendChild(b)

xml = doc.toprettyxml()[len(declaration):]

print xml

Answer 3

If you're set on using minidom, just scan back in the file and remove the first line after writing all the XML you need.

Answer 4

Unfortunately minidom does not give you the option to omit the XML Declaration.

But you can always serialise the document content yourself by calling toxml() on the document's root element instead of the document. Then you won't get an XML Declaration:

xml= document.documentElement.toxml('utf-8')

...but then you also wouldn't get anything else outside the root element, such as the DOCTYPE, or any comments or processing instructions. If you need them, serialise each child of the document object one by one:

xml= '\n'.join(node.toxml('utf-8') for node in document.childNodes)

I wondered if there are other packages which do allow to neglect the header.

DOM Level 3 LS defines an xml-declaration config parameter you can use to suppress it. The only Python implementation I know of is pxdom, which is thorough on standards support, but not at all fast.

Answer 5

The header is print in Document. If you print the node directly, it won't print the header.

root = doc.childNodes[0]
root.toprettyxml(encoding="utf-8")

Answer 6

Just replace the first line with blank:

import xml.dom.minidom as MD     
<XML String>.replace(MD.Document().toxml()+'\n', '')