Build embedded XML based on string containment I have a list of strings that represent a path. These are unique, unsorted values that look like this:

li = ['1/', '1/2/4/', '1/23/4/', '1/2/', '1/1/3/', '1/2/3/4/', '1/1/', '1/23/', '1/2/3/']


It can also be assumed that every path has a parent, e.g. 1/2/ has parent 1/.

The goal is to organise these items in a structured XML format, where the parent-relation is clear, i.e. where deeper elements are part of their parents, mimicking a directory tree. Desired output for the list above would be:

&lt;root&gt;
  &lt;include path="1/"&gt;
    &lt;include path="1/1/"&gt;
      &lt;include path="1/1/3/"/&gt;
    &lt;/include&gt;
    &lt;include path="1/2/"&gt;
      &lt;include path="1/2/3/"&gt;
        &lt;include path="1/2/3/4/"/&gt;
      &lt;/include&gt;
      &lt;include path="1/2/4/"/&gt;
    &lt;/include&gt;
    &lt;include path="1/23/"&gt;
      &lt;include path="1/23/4/"/&gt;
    &lt;/include&gt;
  &lt;/include&gt;
&lt;/root&gt;


The following works (run it here), but I am not sure about efficiency. The actual list can be thousands of values long. I am also curious about memory management, because I am writing all XML nodes in-memory. The eventual goal is to print the final XML to a file.

from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET
import re

li = ['1/', '1/2/4/', '1/23/4/', '1/2/', '1/1/3/', '1/2/3/4/', '1/1/', '1/23/', '1/2/3/']
li = sorted(li)
# In Python &gt;= 3.6 dicts maintain order
# Sets don't? So use best of both worlds, dict: speed and order
di = {l: False for l in li}

root = ET.Element('root')

# First build the root nodes, remove them from dict
for p in list(di.keys()):
  if len(list(filter(None, p.split('/')))) == 1:
    del di[p]
    root.append(ET.Element('include', {'path': p}))

# Because dict (and so keys()) are ordered, we can assume that the nodes higher 
# in the include tree are created before the more in-depth ones
for p in list(di.keys()):
  parent_path = re.sub('\d+\/$', '', p)
  try:
    parent = root.find(f'.//include[@path="{parent_path}"]')
    parent.append(ET.Element('include', {'path': p}))
  except Exception:
    print(f"parent not found for {p}")

print(ET.tostring(root))


This indeed returns the expected output (not pretty-printed). I am wondering if there is a better option and whether there are flaws in my approach. I'll only be using Python >= 3.6, which is quite important for the order of the dictionary.



Update

I noticed a bug with the sorting of the list/dict because actually the sorting was done on the strings which isn't what we want. (e.g. 1001/ would be before 134/) I rewrote part of the code, and use sets assuming these are faster.

from xml.etree import ElementTree as ET
import re


def get_xml(paths):
    root = ET.Element('paths')

    root_paths = set()
    for p in paths:
        # If only one item, use as first-level node - e.g. 1/
        if len(list(filter(None, p.split('/')))) == 1:
            root_paths.add(p)
            root.append(ET.Element('include', {'path': p}))

    # Remove root_paths from set
    paths = paths.difference(root_paths)

    # We can't use regular sort because that'll sort by string
    # Instead, sort by array of ints representation. E.g. `12/1001/14/` -&gt; [12, 1001, 14]
    sorted_paths = sorted(paths, key=lambda item: [int(n) for n in list(filter(None, item.split('/')))])
    for p in sorted_paths:
        # Find parent_path by removing last part of string
        parent_path = re.sub('\d+\/$', '', p)
        try:
            parent = root.find(f'.//include[@path="{parent_path}"]')
            parent.append(ET.Element('include', {'path': p}))
        except AttributeError:
            print(f"parent {parent_path} not found for {p}", flush=True)

    return root

s = {'1/', '1/2/4/', '1/23/4/', '1/2/', '1/1/3/', '1/2/3/4/', '1/1/', '1/23/', '1/2/3/'}

xml = get_xml(s)

print(ET.tostring(xml))
Because you have the overall root node, (a bit confusing that it changes name from root to paths between the two versions) there shouldn't actually be any inherent difference between nodes of the form "1/" and nodes of the form "1/2/" or longer. It should be possible to completely remove the first loop, and just have a special case definition of parent_path to point it to the actual root. 

If you do that, questions about whether dicts or sets are faster for deleting the length one paths, or suitably order preserving, or anything else, become a moot point. There's nothing left that you can't just do directly on lists/arrays, and for single pass iteration they are almost certainly the fastest option.

Memory consumption is something that I can't helpfully speculate about. It will depend on the particulars of your xml library and data. It's a problem if you're running out of memory, in which case profile it to check the usage is where you expect. 
If you're allowed to mutate the input array, and are worried about memory, you'd get some small savings and possibly a small efficiency boost for doing the sort in place rather than using sorted. However, you'd need a streaming XML writer (and some moderately knotty logic about when things can be committed) to make a significant difference. As far as I can see from the docs, xml.etree.ElementTree does not have inbuilt support for such streaming.

In terms of runtime, I wouldn't want to speculate about efficiency without measuring it. It might be that you could speed up the regex search, for example, by using re.compile ahead of time. That's unlikely to harm, but it can't help much if parsing the regex is taking an insignificant amount of time to begin with.

Code style, it would be nice to use more descriptive names, and in particular to avoid single letter variables. The comments, especially the comment on the sorting explaining the subtle bug in the naive version, are very helpful.