Problem with newlines when I use toprettyxml()

I'm currently using the toprettyxml() function of the xml.dom module in a Python script and I'm having some trouble with the newlines. If don't use the newl parameter or if I use toprettyxml(newl='\n') it displays several newlines instead of only one.

For instance

f = open(filename, 'w')
f.write(dom1.toprettyxml(encoding='UTF-8'))
f.close()

displayed:

<params>


    <param name="Level" value="#LEVEL#"/>


    <param name="Code" value="281"/>


</params>

Does anyone know where the problem comes from and how I can use it? FYI I'm using Python 2.6.1


I found another great solution :

f = open(filename, 'w')
dom_string = dom1.toprettyxml(encoding='UTF-8')
dom_string = os.linesep.join([s for s in dom_string.splitlines() if s.strip()])
f.write(dom_string)
f.close()

Above solution basically removes the unwanted newlines from the dom_string which are generated by toprettyxml().

Inputs taken from -> What's a quick one-liner to remove empty lines from a python string?


toprettyxml() is quite awful. It is not a matter of Windows and '\r\n'. Trying any string as the newlparameter shows that too many lines are being added. Not only that, but other blanks (that may cause you problems when a machine reads the xml) are also added.

Some workarounds available at
http://ronrothman.com/public/leftbraned/xml-dom-minidom-toprettyxml-and-silly-whitespace