How to display a XML file in a folder like system

I have searched quite a bit for some help on this but most information about XML and Python is about how to read and parse files, not how to write them. I currently have a script that outputs the file system of a folder as an XML file but I want this file to include HTML tags that can be read on开发者_如何学Python the web.

Also, I am looking for a graphical folder style display of the XML information. I have seen this solved in javascript but I don't have any experience in javascript so is this possible in python?

import os
import sys
from xml.sax.saxutils import quoteattr as xml_quoteattr

dirname = sys.argv[1]
a = open("output2.xml", "w") 

def DirAsLessXML(path):
    result = '<dir name = %s>\n' % xml_quoteattr(os.path.basename(path))
    for item in os.listdir(path):
        itempath = os.path.join(path, item)
        if os.path.isdir(itempath):
            result += '\n'.join('  ' + line for line in 
                DirAsLessXML(os.path.join(path, item)).split('\n'))
        elif os.path.isfile(itempath):
            result += '  <file name=%s />\n' % xml_quoteattr(item)
    result += '</dir>'
    return result

if __name__ == '__main__':

    a.write('<structure>\n' + DirAsLessXML(dirname))

Generally it's not a good idea to code HTML directly in Python by building strings as you do it. You won't understand what kind of HTML you produce if look at your code in a month or so. I recommend using a templating engine.

Alternatively, as you are converting from XML to XML, XSLT (an XML transformation language) seems like a good solution.

Concerning JavaScript, you'll need it if you want an interactive folder view. But this does not influence how to generate the HTML page. Whatever approach you use, just add a script include tag to the HTML header and implement the JavaScript part in an extra file (the one you include, of course).