sortxml - a simple XML element sorter

This module can be used by importing sortxml.sort_xml or by running standalone from the command-line.

Using sort_xml():

Returns an ElementTree representing the resulting whole document. ElementTree can easily be converted to string or written to a file like so:

    >>> foo_str = ET.tostring(sort_xml(xml_doc, node_path, sort_attr).getroot())
        # Or...
    >>> sort_xml(xml_doc, node_path, sort_attr).write('foo.xml')

Required arguments:

• xml_doc -- a text IO stream (such as an open file object), Path object pointing to an XML file, string representing the file path, or string containing the file contents of a valid XML file. Can't take an ElementTree instance because we need to use our own parser to keep track of namespaces.
• node_path -- a string containing the path to the node you want to sort the children of in the XPath language of the etree module
• sort_attr -- the attribute of the child elements to use as the sort key

Optional arguments:

• use_text -- use sort_attr as the name of a subelement of the path's children whose text will be the sort key (default: False)
• sort_as_datetime -- try to parse the values of the sort key as a datetime using the dateutil module and sort chronologically (default: False, mutually exclusive with sort_as_decimal)
• sort_as_decimal -- try to parse the values of the sort key as a decimal and sort numerically (useful to keep '10' from showing up right after '1') (default: False, mutually exclusive with sort_as_datetime)
• descending -- sort in descending order instead of ascending (default: False)

Usage on the command line:

Run python -m sortxml -h to display this help text.

Usage: sortxml [-h] [-v] [-r] [-t] [--datetime | --decimal] [-o OUTPUT_FILE] input_file sort_xpath sort_attr

A simple XML element sorter. Will sort the children of selected elements using a given attribute's value or subelement's text as the sort key.
Example usage:

    $ python sortxml.py ARForm_orig.rdl "./DataSets/DataSet[@Name='ARForm']/Fields" Name -o ARForm.rdl

Positional arguments:

• input_file – File path to the source xml file.
• sort_xpath – XPath-style selector for elements to sort the children of. This has the same limitations as Python's ElementTree module.
• sort_attr – The name of the attribute to use as the sort key.

Options:

• -h, --help – show this help message and exit
• -v, --version – show program's version number and exit
• -r, --reverse, --descending – Sort the child elements in reverse (descending) order.
• -t, --text, --use-text – Treat the sort attribute name as the name of a subelement whose text is the sort key.
• --datetime, --as-datetime – Try to parse the sort key as a date/time value. Mutually exclusive with --decimal.
• --decimal, --as-decimal – Try to parse the sort key as a decimal number. Mutually exclusive with --datetime.
• -o OUTPUT_FILE, --output OUTPUT_FILE – File path to the destination file. (Default is to append '_sorted' to the filename before the extension.)