Encoding with ZipFile Python-CodePudding

I'm trying to generate an .xml file using the library ZipFile in python 3.9.
The content i'm trying to add is the following : "Invoice n°123456789"

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
from zipfile import ZipFile

def gen_zip():

  # Init xml element
  root = ET.Element("MyXml")
  # Fill SubElement
  batch = ET.SubElement(
      root,
      "Batch",
      Id="1",
      DateTime=datetime.strftime(datetime.now(), "%Y%m%d%H%M%S"),
      Value = "Invoice n°123456789"
  )

  zf = ZipFile("myzip.zip", "w")
  # Write xml to zip
  zf.writestr("file.xml", ET.tostring(root))
  zf.close()

  return None

The problem i have is that the content of my file file.xml in myzip.zip is the following :

<MyXml>
  <Batch Id="1" DateTime="20221207093739" Value="Invoice n&#176;123456789"/>
</MyXml>

I don't know why the ° symbol becomes °. As per the doc the writestr function does utf-8 encoding and not unicode. (https://docs.python.org/3/library/zipfile.html)

I'd like the content of my .xml to be Invoice n°123456789 i/o Invoice n°123456789

CodePudding user response：

Add the correct encoding as a parameter when you call tostring.

zf.writestr("file.xml", ET.tostring(root, encoding='unicode'))

CodePudding user response：

To include special characters in an XML file using the ElementTree library without them being escaped, you can use the escape method from the xml.sax.saxutils module, like this:

Here's how you could modify your code to use a CDATA section:

import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
import xml.sax.saxutils
from zipfile import ZipFile

def gen_zip():
  # Init xml element
  root = ET.Element("MyXml")
  # Escape the special characters in the invoice value
  value = xml.sax.saxutils.escape("Invoice n°123456789")
  # Fill SubElement with the escaped value
  batch = ET.SubElement(
      root,
      "Batch",
      Id="1",
      DateTime=datetime.strftime(datetime.now(), "%Y%m%d%H%M%S"),
      Value=value
  )

  zf = ZipFile("myzip.zip", "w")
  # Write xml to zip
  zf.writestr("file.xml", ET.tostring(root))
  zf.close()

  return None

This should produce an XML file with the Invoice n°123456789 value, without the special characters being escaped.