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

<

Answer 1

You might be able to use a custom file-like object which removes the first tag, e.g:

class RemoveFirstLine:
    def __init__(self, f):
        self.f = f
        self.xmlTagFound = False

    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        return getattr(self, self.f)

    def write(self, s):
        if not self.xmlTagFound:
            x = 0 # just to be safe
            for x, c in enumerate(s):
                if c == '>':
                    self.xmlTagFound = True
                    break
            self.f.write(s[x+1:])
        else:
            self.f.write(s)

...
f = RemoveFirstLine(open('path', 'wb'))
Node.writexml(f, encoding='UTF-8')

or something similar. This has the advantage the file doesn't have to be totally rewritten if the XML files are fairly large.