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@benallard
Last active March 5, 2024 05:28
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Small python script to split huge XML files into parts. It takes one or two parameters. The first is always the huge XML file, and the second the size of the wished chunks in Kb (default to 1Mb) (0 spilt wherever possible) The generated files are called like the original one with an index between the filename and the extension like that: bigxml.…
#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import xml.parsers.expat
from xml.sax.saxutils import escape
from optparse import OptionParser
from math import log10
# How much data we process at a time
CHUNK_SIZE = 1024 * 1024
# The sequence of element leading us to the current one
path = []
# How far we are in the current file
cur_size = 0
# From how much should we start another file
MAX_SIZE = 1024*1024 # 1Mb
# The current index
cur_idx = 0
# The current file handle we are writing to
cur_file = None
# The format string used to introduce the index in the file to be written
FMT = ".%d"
# The filename we are playing with
out_dir = None
root = None
ext = None
# The xml declaration of the file.
xml_declaration = None
# What was the signature of the last start element
start = None
# if we are currently in the process of changing file
ending = False
def attrs_s(attrs):
""" This generate the XML attributes from an element attribute list """
l = ['']
for i in range(0,len(attrs), 2):
l.append('%s="%s"' % (attrs[i], escape(attrs[i+1])))
return ' '.join(l)
def next_file():
""" This makes the decision to cut the current file and starta new one """
global cur_size, ending
if (not ending) and (cur_size > MAX_SIZE):
# size above threshold, and not already ending
global cur_file, cur_idx
print "part %d Done" % cur_idx
ending = True
# Close the current elements
for elem in reversed(path):
end_element(elem[0])
# Close the file
cur_file.close()
# reset the size
cur_size = 0
# Open another file
cur_idx += 1
cur_file = open(os.path.join(out_dir, root + FMT % cur_idx + ext),
'wt')
if xml_declaration is not None:
cur_file.write('<?xml%s?>\n' % attrs_s(xml_declaration))
# Start again where we stopped
for elem in path:
start_element(*elem)
# We are done 'ending'
ending = False
def xml_decl(version, encoding, standalone):
global xml_declaration
l = ['version', version, 'encoding', encoding]
if standalone != -1:
l.extend(['standalone', 'yes' if standalone else 'no'])
xml_declaration = l
cur_file.write('<?xml%s?>\n' % attrs_s(xml_declaration))
def start_element(name, attrs):
""" Called by the parser when he meet a start element """
global cur_size, start
if start is not None:
# Chaining starts after each others
cur_file.write('<%s%s>' % (start[0], attrs_s(start[1])))
start = (name, attrs)
if ending:
return
cur_size += len(name) + sum(len(k) for k in attrs)
path.append((name, attrs))
def end_element(name):
""" Caled by the parser when he meet an end element """
global cur_size
global start
if start is not None:
# Empty element, good, we did not wrote the start part
cur_file.write('<%s%s/>' % (start[0],attrs_s(start[1])))
else:
# There was some data, close it normaly
cur_file.write('</%s>' % name)
start = None
if ending:
return
elem = path.pop()
assert elem[0] == name
cur_size += len(name)
next_file()
def char_data(data):
""" Called by the parser when he meet data """
global cur_size, start
wroteStart = False
if start is not None:
# The data belong to an element, we should write the start part first
cur_file.write('<%s%s>' % (start[0], attrs_s(start[1])))
start = None
wroteStart = True
# ``escape`` is too much for us, only & and < ned to be escaped there ...
data = data.replace('&', '&amp;')
data = data.replace('<', '&lt;')
if data == '>':
data = '&gt;'
cur_file.write(data.encode('utf-8'))
cur_size += len(data)
if not wroteStart:
# The data was outside of an element, it could be the right moment to
# make the split
next_file()
def main(filename, output_dir):
# Create a parser
p = xml.parsers.expat.ParserCreate()
# We want to reproduce the input, so we are interested in the order of the
# attributess
p.ordered_attributes = 1
# Set our callbacks (we are stripping comments out by not defining
# callbacks for them)
p.XmlDeclHandler = xml_decl
p.StartElementHandler = start_element
p.EndElementHandler = end_element
p.CharacterDataHandler = char_data
global cur_file, cur_idx
global out_dir, root, ext
global FMT
FMT = ".%%0%dd" % (int(log10(os.path.getsize(filename) / MAX_SIZE)) + 1)
out_dir, filename = os.path.split(filename)
if output_dir is not None:
out_dir = output_dir
root, ext = os.path.splitext(filename)
cur_file = open(os.path.join(out_dir, root + FMT % cur_idx + ext), 'wt')
with open(filename, 'rt') as xml_file:
while True:
# Read a chunk
chunk = xml_file.read(CHUNK_SIZE)
if len(chunk) < CHUNK_SIZE:
# End of file
# tell the parser we're done
p.Parse(chunk, 1)
# exit the loop
break
# process the chunk
p.Parse(chunk)
# Don't forget to close our handle
cur_file.close()
print "part %d Done" % cur_idx
if __name__ == "__main__":
parser = OptionParser(usage="usage: %prog [options] XML_FILE")
parser.add_option("-o", "--output-dir",
help="Specify the directory where the xml files will be written" \
"(default to the same directory where the original file is)")
parser.add_option("-M", "--max_size", type="int",
help="Specify the size at which the files should be split (in Kb)")
(options, args) = parser.parse_args()
if len(args) != 1:
parser.error("incorrect number of arguments")
if options.max_size is not None:
MAX_SIZE = options.max_size * 1024
main(args[0], options.output_dir)
@mhasan2k
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Awesome! This script worked fine without changing a single bit of code. But my requirement is little bit different. I need to split a large XML file based on elements count. For example 5000 <Document> per split file. I don’t want to split the file somewhere in between <Document> tag. I am very new in python, would you please help me on this. I would really appreciate your help.

Sample XML file:

<Documents>
    <Document>
        (more than 250 elements and sub-elements exist between this tag)
    </Document>
    <Document>
        (more than 250 elements and sub-elements exist between this tag)
    </Document>
</Documents>

Also, I would like to add the XML declaration at the top and close with root tags <Documents> in every split files. Regards.

@harsham05
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Thank you so much!!! Works perfectly!!

I wasnt able to get it to work for custom size but default size works just fine 😃

This saved me the trouble of writing another Java program.

@CaptainQwark
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On line 160 the filename variable gets overwritten, this causes the open(filename) to fail on line 168 when you point to a source file that is not in the current directory. Change the name for filename on line 140, 160 (2nd one) and 168 to fix this.

@nicwolff
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mhasan2k, hope you found a solution, if not try this https://gist.github.com/nicwolff/b4da6ec84ba9c23c8e59 which accepts the name of the element to split on, and the number of them to split at, and puts the declaration at the top of each file. And is a lot less code, since it just subclasses xml.sax.saxutils.XMLGenerator.

@drhema
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drhema commented Jun 22, 2015

I'm sorry i'm totally new to python and hope to know to run the script
I have 3000 sitemaps in one folder and want to split into smaller ones. so what command lines i should do?
I installed python on c drive then use this method
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19779986/how-to-run-a-py-file-in-windows-command-line
but it give me error in line 56

@vittoriozamboni
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In line 47, if attribute value is None the xml saxutils will generate an AttributeError like AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'replace'. I've fixed it by adding a check to the attribute value: https://gist.github.com/vittoriozamboni/936d37b761180107127a/revisions

@dilip-md
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dilip-md commented Jun 9, 2016

Hi everyone.... I'm completely beginner to the python... so pls help me

When i run the above code in python 3.5.1 on windows, it is giving the following error... The code file is XMLSPLIT.py on the desktop and the XML file to be splitted in also on the desktop as dblp... i understood the error that i havent given any arguments ... so i am not getting how to give the dblp XML file as input to be splitted.... So kindly pls assist me... Thank u all

Usage: XMLSPLIT.py [options] XML_FILE

XMLSPLIT.py: error: incorrect number of arguments

@SAMAHA333
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I also got "incorrect number of arguments error".Please help.

@arandomic
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Don't work with some utf-8 in xml ('UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position...')

@daniel-martinezm
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Works great! Thanks a lot.

@nclaveeoh
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@arandomic

Don't work with some utf-8 in xml ('UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode characters in position...')

Same thing happened to me, I created a new encode function and made sure everything i passed to cur_file.write( used it. Function below:

def encode(str): return str.encode('utf-8').strip()

@nclaveeoh
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@dilip-md @SAMAHA333

I also got "incorrect number of arguments error".Please help.

python xml_split.py <file name to be split> -M <split file size kb> -o <output path>

@robgcf
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robgcf commented Aug 31, 2017

This would have been great if it worked. I gave up trying to pass it a second option and just gave it the name of the large XML file, and still got an error:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "xmlsplit.py", line 198, in
main(args[0], options.output_dir)
File "xmlsplit.py", line 179, in main
p.Parse(chunk)
File "xmlsplit.py", line 106, in end_element
cur_file.write('<%s%s/>' % (start[0],attrs_s(start[1])))
UnicodeEncodeError: 'ascii' codec can't encode character u'\xb2' in position 573: ordinal not in range(128)

Since nobody is answering posts here, I'm going to delete it and move onto finding another way to deal with it. I don't have time to learn Python to fix it.

@spedy
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spedy commented Oct 31, 2017

Works perfectly, thanks! To fix the ascii encoding errors I added:

cur_file.write(u'<{0}{1}/>'.format(
            start[0].encode('ascii', 'ignore').decode('ascii'),
            attrs_s(start[1]).encode('ascii', 'ignore').decode('ascii')
))

@coppermight
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@spedy Could you please provide your code.

@torbentschechne
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@spedy where did you add that code? can you provide your full source code? That would be very helpful.

@HRezaeiM
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Works perfectly, thanks! To fix the ascii encoding errors I added:
cur_file.write(u'<{0}{1}/>'.format(
start[0].encode('ascii', 'ignore').decode('ascii'),
attrs_s(start[1]).encode('ascii', 'ignore').decode('ascii')
))

works perfectly with this on line 106 instead of whats there now.

@marcelzebrowski
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This works for me and save my time - thank you!
python split.py -o ./output/ -M 500000 output.xml

@minafarid
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minafarid commented Jun 6, 2019

Thank you, this is great! Same comment as above about the encoding, but also changed in lines 92 and 106

@scnctech
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Thanks! this worked great and saved me quite a bit of time!
Just had to make some changes for my particular encoding needs and file sizes. I'm linking to the one with my changes in case anybody finds it useful.
https://gist.github.com/scnctech/19cd6801f933e85c3c2c58048852b0de

@sobaee
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sobaee commented Aug 3, 2020

Great job, but It gives me this:

File "xml_split.py", line 56
print "part %d Done" % cur_idx ^
SyntaxError: Missing parentheses in call to 'print'.
Did you mean print("part %d Done" % cur_idx)?

Help please?!

@scnctech
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scnctech commented Aug 3, 2020

try my version and let me know how it goes: here

@sobaee
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sobaee commented Aug 3, 2020

@scnctech
This man (scnctech) has resolved all these errors with his copy of this script.
It has worked perfectly in my case.
He saved my day.
Thanks alot

This is the command I used after I get to the directory (cd command) which contain both xml_split.py and my xml file (arwiktionary.xml) :
python xml_split.py arwiktionary.xml -M 40000

The output files are:
arwiktionary.0.xml
arwiktionary.1.xml

Thanks again

@sv-hmelevsky
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me know how it goes: here

This solution is work perfectly! No problem with big file chunks and encoding!

@sureshpnuri
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sureshpnuri commented Dec 16, 2023

Didn't work for me. For sample xml file below, my expectation is that it should create 2 xml files and each file should have product node and one review comment node of the product. But the second file it created has product tag, but not the in it. So the second file created is not a valid xml file in my case due to missing Product\Name tag. However, Product opening and closing tags are created fine.

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<root>
	<product>
		<name>Product1</name>
		<review>
			<id>1</id>
			<comment>Magnam ipsum dolore dolorem dolorem sed adipisci sed. Dolore adipisci neque quisquam. Dolor labore dolore porro magnam. Ipsum ipsum ut neque aliquam eius labore porro. Dolor sit etincidunt sit ipsum tempora porro. Quaerat consectetur ut magnam adipisci velit.</comment>
		</review>
		<review>
			<id>2</id>
			<comment>Dolor velit etincidunt eius labore consectetur. Quaerat consectetur dolor quisquam modi adipisci numquam tempora. Est sit neque quisquam labore modi quisquam magnam. Dolorem tempora dolore neque dolorem. Est magnam voluptatem etincidunt dolor eius quaerat velit.</comment>
		</review>
	</product>
</root>

Output I got.

file1

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<root>
	<product>
		<name>Product1</name>
		<review>
			<id>1</id>
			<comment>Magnam ipsum dolore dolorem dolorem sed adipisci sed. Dolore adipisci neque quisquam. Dolor labore dolore porro magnam. Ipsum ipsum ut neque aliquam eius labore porro. Dolor sit etincidunt sit ipsum tempora porro. Quaerat consectetur ut magnam adipisci velit.</comment>
		</review>
	</product>
</root>

file2 (missing Product\Name

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='utf-8'?>
<root>
	<product>
		<review>
			<id>2</id>
			<comment>Dolor velit etincidunt eius labore consectetur. Quaerat consectetur dolor quisquam modi adipisci numquam tempora. Est sit neque quisquam labore modi quisquam magnam. Dolorem tempora dolore neque dolorem. Est magnam voluptatem etincidunt dolor eius quaerat velit.</comment>
		</review>
	</product>
</root>

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