How to check if an xml node has children in python with minidom?

Question

How to check if an xml node has children in python with minidom?

I'm writing an recursive function to remove all attributes in an xml file and I need to check if an node has child nodes before calling the same function again.

What I've tried: I tried to use node.childNodes.length, but didn't have much luck. Any other suggestions?

Thanks

My Code:

    def removeAllAttributes(dom):
        for node in dom.childNodes:
            if node.attributes:
                for key in node.attributes.keys():
                    node.removeAttribute(key)
            if node.childNodes.length > 1:
                node = removeAllAttributes(dom)
        return dom

Error code: RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

Answer 1

You are in an infinite loop. Here is your problem line:

            node = removeAllAttributes(dom)

I think you mean

            node = removeAllAttributes(node)

Answer 2

You could try hasChildNodes() - although if inspecting the childNodes attribute directly isn't working you may have other problems.

On a guess, your processing is being thrown off because your element has no element children, but does have text children or something. You can check for that this way:

def removeAllAttributes(element):
    for attribute_name in element.attributes.keys():
        element.removeAttribute(attribute_name)
    for child_node in element.childNodes:
        if child_node.nodeType == xml.dom.minidom.ELEMENT_NODE:
            removeAllAttributes(child_node)