python - Preserve order of attributes when modifying with minidom

Question

Is there a way I can preserve the original order of attributes when processing XML with minidom?

Say I have: <color red="255" green="255" blue="233" /> when I modify this with minidom the attributes are rearranged alphabetically blue, green, and red. I'd like to preserve the original order.

I am processing the file by looping through the elements returned by elements = doc.getElementsByTagName('color') and then I do assignments like this e.attributes["red"].value = "233".

Answer 1

To keep the attribute order I made this slight modification in minidom:

from collections import OrderedDict

In the Element class :

__init__(...)
    self._attrs = OrderedDict()
    #self._attrs = {}
writexml(...)
    #a_names.sort()

Now this will only work with Python 2.7+ And I'm not sure if it actually works => Use at your own risks...

And please note that you should not rely on attribute order:

Note that the order of attribute specifications in a start-tag or empty-element tag is not significant.