Ron Adam wrote:
In my program I have a lot of statements that append elements, but
sometimes I don't want to append the element so it requres an if
statement to check it, and that requires assigning the returned element
from a function to a name or calling the funtion twice.
e = ET.Element('nam e')
e.append(get_su belement(obj)) # but raises an exception on None
This works, but I have a lot of appends.
sube = get_element(obj )
if sube is None:
e.append(sube)
Now if Elements worked more like lists I could extend an element.
alist = []
alist.extend([]) # returns orginal list
With strings.
s = ''
s += '' # returns original string (or copy)
So is there an identity operation with Element Tree elements that I can
use to avoid putting a lot of if and or try statements around appending
elements?
I could wrap the append and do it this way...
def eappend(e1, e2):
if e2 is None: return e1
e1.append(e2)
return e1
Then do...
e = eappend(e, get_element(obj )) # Append if not None.
But maybe there's a better way?
The following worked in cases where I needed to append a list of items.
def extend(e1, elist):
for e in elist:
e1.append(e)
return e1
Although I still need to return the list as elements aren't mutable.
element = extend(element, elist)
It would be nice if this was built in so I could do... Hint hint. :-)
element.extend( elist)
Where elist is a list of elements or an element with a number of sub
elements.
I still need to special case individual appends or put the returned item
in a list so I use the extend() function on the returned element.
I guess I need to look at the Element Tree source code.
Cheers,
Ron