Changing attribute and/or text values in Esri metadata using Python

Question

I'm new both to this forum and Python, and I'm having trouble tracking down a solution to my problem. I'm hoping someone can offer some process-improvement advice and/or code to help get my metadata issue sorted. This is the first script I've attempted so I imagine there's a better way to do what I'm looking for.

My Goal:

Create a script to:

• import metadata and have it reflect the correct information about the new file • remove linkage, lineage, and copyHistory elements or text (and any other reference to location on our servers) for public sharing of file

Current process:

• Python script to apply metadata based on an existing XML file using arcpy.ImportMetadata_conversion, sync enabled. • Remove elements from XML file using minidom removeChild.

# Step 4: Import metadata

# polygon file
arcpy.ImportMetadata_conversion ("metadatafile.xml", "FROM_ARCGIS", polyfilefull, "ENABLED")



#Step 5: Remove identifying information from metadata
# based on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5699745/how-to-comment-out-an-xml-element-using-minidom-dom-implementation
# added "utf-8" to avoid a whitespace error, appears to work

from xml.dom import minidom

polydoc = minidom.parse(polyfilefull + ".xml")
    for linkage in polydoc.getElementsByTagName('linkage'):
    linkage.parentNode.removeChild(linkage)
for lineage in polydoc.getElementsByTagName('lineage'):
    lineage.parentNode.removeChild(lineage)
for copyHistory in polydoc.getElementsByTagName('copyHistory'):
    copyHistory.parentNode.removeChild(copyHistory)
f = open(polyfilefull + ".xml", "w")
f.write(polydoc.toxml("utf-8"))
f.close()

Issues:

• “Linkage” reappears when metadata is viewed in Arc. • Want to update publication date based on current date

Possible solutions:

• Remove the text of the element rather than the element itself, and remove ‘sync’ from the element or • change the value of sync to FALSE.

Answer 1

I've found a solution. I can set the text as empty ('') and then change the attribute value for Sync to FALSE. This keeps the fields from popping up again the next time I view the metadata in ArcGIS. I also added the update for the publication date.

This really was just a matter of looking through forums until I found the right answer, but for some reason I had a very hard time finding something to explain the simple practice of editing attribute values. As soon as I asked I came across the answer, as it goes.

from xml.dom import minidom

polydoc = minidom.parse(polyfilefull + ".xml")

for linkage in polydoc.getElementsByTagName('linkage'):
    linkage.firstChild.nodeValue=''
    linkage.setAttribute("Sync", "FALSE")
for pubDate in polydoc.getElementsByTagName('pubDate'):
    pubDate.firstChild.nodeValue=time.strftime("%Y%m%d")

for lineage in polydoc.getElementsByTagName('lineage'):
    lineage.parentNode.removeChild(lineage)
for copyHistory in polydoc.getElementsByTagName('copyHistory'):
    copyHistory.parentNode.removeChild(copyHistory)

f = open(polyfilefull + ".xml", "w")
f.write(polydoc.toxml("utf-8"))
f.close()