Resume Management with XmlResume, Python and OpenOffice

Couple weeks ago, aimlessly surfing the web (a relatively rare occurrence for me nowadays, thanks to Google), I came across someone's resume whose format I liked - at the bottom of the page, it said "Generated by XmlResume". That got me curious about what it was and how it could help me, so I decided to check it out.

With XmlResume, you write your resume out once in a standard XML format, and XmlResume can parse this XML into plain text, HTML and PDF. You can also filter out specific sections of the resume by setting an optional target attribute to any of the elements in the XML. So simple and elegant, yet such a powerful idea.

The last time I was looking for a job, the trend was to send out plain text resumes, which you would drop into the body of an email. Before that, it was PDF attachments. Apparently the trend now is to send them out as Microsoft Word attachments. Sadly XmlResume cannot write out MS-Word docs, and even the text format it writes is not exactly what I am used to (its formatted with margins and newlines to look almost like a Word or PDF doc, requiring extensive reformatting if I decided to send it in the body of an email).

I did take a quick look at the code, but decided it would be too much work to modify it to suit my requirements (MS-Word and email friendly text output). Thinking about this some more, I figured that if I could convert the XML into an OpenOffice text document (ODT), OpenOffice could then convert the ODT into a multitude of formats, including plain text, XHTML, PDF and Microsoft Word formats.

Since XmlResume is a Java application, I initially thought about adding this as an extension to it using the jOpenDocument library, but then found the odfpy Python library. Both of these are wrappers to write your content out into the OpenDocument format (ODF), which is basically just a zipped set of XML files. Since this was something that I would want to just run from the command line, writing the whole thing in Python seemed to be a simpler alternative than messing with Ant targets or shell script wrappers.

So I wrote a little Python script that parses the input XmlResume XML file into a bean using the XML parsing library elementtree, then converting the bean to either a plain text document (initially for testing) using plain file.write() calls or to an OpenOffice text document (.odt) using odfpy. Here it is:

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#!/usr/bin/python # -*- coding: utf-8 -*- import sys from elementtree.ElementTree import parse import getopt from odf.opendocument import OpenDocumentText from odf.style import FontFace from odf.style import ListLevelProperties from odf.style import ParagraphProperties from odf.style import Style from odf.style import TextProperties from odf.text import List from odf.text import ListItem from odf.text import ListLevelStyleBullet from odf.text import ListStyle from odf.text import P from odf.text import Span import string class ResumeModel: def __init__(self): self.name = None self.address = None self.phone = None self.email = None self.contacts = [] self.objective_title = None self.objectives = [] self.skillarea_title = None self.skillset_titles = [] self.skillsets = [[]] self.jobs_title = None self.job_titles = [] self.job_employers = [] self.job_periods = [] self.job_descriptions = [] self.job_achievements = [[]] self.academics_title = None self.academics = [] self.awards_title = None self.awards = [] def to_string(self): print "name=", self.name print "address=", self.address print "phone=", self.phone print "email=", self.email for contact in self.contacts: print "contact=", contact print "objective_title", self.objective_title for objective in self.objectives: print "objective=", objective print "skillarea_title=", self.skillarea_title for skillset_title in self.skillset_titles: print "skillset_title:", skillset_title for skillset in self.skillsets: print "skillset=", ",".join(skillset) print "jobs_title=", self.jobs_title for job_title in self.job_titles: print "job_title=", job_title for job_employer in self.job_employers: print "job_employer=", job_employer for job_description in self.job_descriptions: print "job_description=", job_description for job_period in self.job_periods: print "job_period=", job_period for job_achievement in self.job_achievements: for job_achievement_item in job_achievement: print "achievement_item=", job_achievement_item print "academics_title", self.academics_title for academic in self.academics: print "academic=", academic print "awards_title=", self.awards_title for award in self.awards: print "award=", award class XmlResumeParser(): def __init__(self, input_file, target): self.target = target self.input = open(input_file, "r") self.root = parse(input_file).getroot() self.breadcrumb = [] self.model = ResumeModel() self.skillset_idx = -1 self.job_idx = -1 self.degree_idx = -1 self.award_idx = -1 def close(self): self.input.close() def parse(self): self.parse_r(self.root) def parse_r(self, parent): if not self.process_target(parent, self.target): return self.breadcrumb.append(parent.tag) self.process_element(parent) for child in list(parent): self.parse_r(child) self.breadcrumb.pop() def process_target(self, parent, target): target_attr = parent.attrib.get("target") if target is None: if target_attr is None: return True else: return False else: if target_attr is None: return True else: if target.find('+') > -1 or target.find(',') > -1: op = "+" if target.find('+') > -1 else "," target_set = set(target.split(op)) target_attr_set = set(target_attr.split(op)) if target.find('+') > -1: return True if len(target_set.intersection(target_attr_set)) \ == len(target_set) else False else: return True if len(target_set.intersection(target_attr_set)) > 0 \ else False else: return True if target_attr == target else False def process_element(self, elem): key = "/".join(self.breadcrumb) tag = elem.tag last_tag = self.breadcrumb[-1:][0] if key.startswith("resume/header/name/"): self.model.name = self.append(self.model.name, elem.text) elif key.startswith("resume/header/address/"): if tag == "street": self.model.address = elem.text elif tag == "city" or tag == "state": self.model.address = self.append(self.model.address, elem.text, ", ") elif tag == "zip": self.model.address = self.append(self.model.address, elem.text, " ") elif key.startswith("resume/header/contact/"): if tag == "phone": self.model.phone = "PHONE: " + elem.text elif tag == "email": self.model.email = "EMAIL: " + elem.text else: self.model.contacts.append(string.upper(elem.tag) + ": " + elem.text) elif key == "resume/objective": self.model.objective_title = self.get_title(elem) elif key.startswith("resume/objective/"): self.model.objectives.append(elem.text) elif key == "resume/skillarea": self.model.skillarea_title = self.get_title(elem) elif key == "resume/skillarea/skillset": self.skillset_idx = self.skillset_idx + 1 self.model.skillset_titles.append(self.get_title(elem)) self.model.skillsets.append([]) elif key == "resume/skillarea/skillset/skill": if elem.attrib.get("level") != None: self.model.skillsets[self.skillset_idx].append(elem.text + " (" + elem.attrib.get("level") + ")") else: self.model.skillsets[self.skillset_idx].append(elem.text) elif key == "resume/history": self.model.jobs_title = self.get_title(elem) elif key == "resume/history/job": self.job_idx = self.job_idx + 1 self.model.job_achievements.append([]) elif key.startswith("resume/history/job/"): if tag == "jobtitle": self.model.job_titles.append(elem.text) elif tag == "employer": self.model.job_employers.append(elem.text) elif tag == "from": if len(list(elem)) == 1: date_from = self.format_date(list(elem)[0]) self.model.job_employers[self.job_idx] = \ self.model.job_employers[self.job_idx] + " (" + date_from elif tag == "to": if len(list(elem)) == 1: date_to = self.format_date(list(elem)[0]) self.model.job_employers[self.job_idx] = \ self.model.job_employers[self.job_idx] + " - " + date_to + ")" elif tag == "description": self.model.job_descriptions.append(elem.text) elif tag == "achievement": self.model.job_achievements[self.job_idx].append(elem.text) elif key == "resume/academics": self.model.academics_title = self.get_title(elem) elif key == "resume/academics/degrees/degree": self.degree_idx = self.degree_idx + 1 self.model.academics.append([]) elif key.startswith("resume/academics/degrees/degree/"): if tag == "level": self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] = elem.text elif tag == "major": self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] = \ self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] + ", " + elem.text elif tag == "institution": self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] = \ self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] + " from " + elem.text elif tag == "from": if len(list(elem) == 1): from_date = self.format_date(list(elem)[0]) self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] = \ self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] + " (" + elem.text elif tag == "to": if len(list(elem) == 1): to_date = self.format_date(list(elem)[0]) self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] = \ self.model.academics[self.degree_idx] + " - " + elem.text + ")" elif key == "resume/awards": self.model.awards_title = self.get_title(elem) elif key == "resume/awards/award": self.award_idx = self.award_idx + 1 self.model.awards.append([]) elif key.startswith("resume/awards/award/"): if tag == "title": self.model.awards[self.award_idx] = elem.text elif tag == "organization": self.model.awards[self.award_idx] = \ self.model.awards[self.award_idx] + " from " + elem.text elif tag == "date": award_date = self.format_date(elem) self.model.awards[self.award_idx] = \ self.model.awards[self.award_idx] + " (" + award_date + ")" def format_date(self, elem): if elem.tag != "date": return elem.tag dmy = ["", "", ""] for child in list(elem): if child.tag == "day": dmy[0] = child.text elif child.tag == "month": dmy[1] = child.text elif child.tag == "year": dmy[2] = child.text else: continue filtered_dmy = filter(lambda e : len(e) > 0, dmy) if len(filtered_dmy) > 0: return " ".join(filtered_dmy) def get_title(self, elem): title = elem.attrib.get("title") if title is None: return string.upper(elem.tag) else: return title def append(self, buf, str, sep=" "): if buf == None: buf = str else: buf = buf + sep + str return buf class TextResumeWriter(): def __init__(self, filename): self.file = open(filename, 'w') def write(self, model): self.writeln(model.name) self.writeln(model.address) self.writeln(", ".join([model.phone, model.email])) self.writeln(", ".join(model.contacts)) self.writeln("-" * 80) self.writeln(model.objective_title) self.writeln() self.writeln("\n".join(model.objectives)) self.writeln("-" * 80) self.writeln(model.skillarea_title) self.writeln() for i in range(0, len(model.skillset_titles)): self.writeln(model.skillset_titles[i] + ": " + ",".join(model.skillsets[i])) self.writeln("-" * 80) self.writeln(model.jobs_title) for i in range(0, len(model.job_titles)): self.writeln() self.writeln(model.job_titles[i]) self.writeln(model.job_employers[i]) self.writeln(model.job_descriptions[i]) for achievement in model.job_achievements[i]: self.writeln("* " + achievement) self.writeln("-" * 80) self.writeln(model.academics_title) self.writeln() for academic in model.academics: self.writeln("* " + academic) self.writeln("-" * 80) self.writeln(model.awards_title) self.writeln() for award in model.awards: self.writeln("* " + award) def writeln(self, s=None): if s != None: self.file.write(s) self.file.write("\n") def close(self): self.file.close() class OdfResumeWriter(): def __init__(self, filename): self.filename = filename self.doc = OpenDocumentText() # font self.doc.fontfacedecls.addElement((FontFace(name="Arial", \ fontfamily="Arial", fontsize="10", fontpitch="variable", \ fontfamilygeneric="swiss"))) # styles style_standard = Style(name="Standard", family="paragraph", \ attributes={"class":"text"}) style_standard.addElement(ParagraphProperties(punctuationwrap="hanging", \ writingmode="page", linebreak="strict")) style_standard.addElement(TextProperties(fontname="Arial", \ fontsize="10pt", fontsizecomplex="10pt", fontsizeasian="10pt")) self.doc.styles.addElement(style_standard) # automatic styles style_normal = Style(name="ResumeText", parentstylename="Standard", \ family="paragraph") self.doc.automaticstyles.addElement(style_normal) style_bold_text = Style(name="ResumeBoldText", parentstylename="Standard", \ family="text") style_bold_text.addElement(TextProperties(fontweight="bold", \ fontweightasian="bold", fontweightcomplex="bold")) self.doc.automaticstyles.addElement(style_bold_text) style_list_text = ListStyle(name="ResumeListText") style_list_bullet = ListLevelStyleBullet(level="1", \ stylename="ResumeListTextBullet", numsuffix=".", bulletchar=u'\u2022') style_list_bullet.addElement(ListLevelProperties(spacebefore="0.1in", \ minlabelwidth="0.2in")) style_list_text.addElement(style_list_bullet) self.doc.automaticstyles.addElement(style_list_text) style_bold_para = Style(name="ResumeH2", parentstylename="Standard", \ family="paragraph") style_bold_para.addElement(TextProperties(fontweight="bold", \ fontweightasian="bold", fontweightcomplex="bold")) self.doc.automaticstyles.addElement(style_bold_para) style_bold_center = Style(name="ResumeH1", parentstylename="Standard", \ family="paragraph") style_bold_center.addElement(TextProperties(fontweight="bold", \ fontweightasian="bold", fontweightcomplex="bold")) style_bold_center.addElement(ParagraphProperties(textalign="center")) self.doc.automaticstyles.addElement(style_bold_center) def write(self, model): self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.name, stylename="ResumeH1")) self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.address, stylename="ResumeH1")) self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=", ".join([model.phone, model.email]), \ stylename="ResumeH1")) for contact in model.contacts: self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=contact, stylename="ResumeH1")) self.nl() self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.objective_title, \ stylename="ResumeH1")) self.nl() for objective in model.objectives: self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=objective, stylename="ResumeText")) self.nl() self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.skillarea_title, \ stylename="ResumeH1")) self.nl() for i in range(0, len(model.skillset_titles)): skillset_line = P(text="") skillset_line.addElement(Span(text=model.skillset_titles[i], \ stylename="ResumeBoldText")) skillset_line.addElement(Span(text=": ", stylename="ResumeBoldText")) skillset_line.addText(", ".join(model.skillsets[i])) self.doc.text.addElement(skillset_line) self.nl() self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.jobs_title, stylename="ResumeH1")) for i in range(0, len(model.job_titles)): self.nl() self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.job_titles[i], \ stylename="ResumeH2")) self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.job_employers[i], \ stylename="ResumeH2")) self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.job_descriptions[i], \ stylename="ResumeText")) achievements_list = List(stylename="ResumeTextList") for achievement in model.job_achievements[i]: achievements_listitem = ListItem() achievements_listitem.addElement(P(text=achievement, \ stylename="ResumeText")) achievements_list.addElement(achievements_listitem) self.doc.text.addElement(achievements_list) self.nl() self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.academics_title, \ stylename="ResumeH1")) academics_list = List(stylename="ResumeTextList") for academic in model.academics: academics_listitem = ListItem() academics_listitem.addElement(P(text=academic, stylename="ResumeText")) academics_list.addElement(academics_listitem) self.doc.text.addElement(academics_list) self.nl() self.doc.text.addElement(P(text=model.awards_title, stylename="ResumeH1")) awards_list = List(stylename="ResumeTextList") for award in model.awards: awards_listitem = ListItem() awards_listitem.addElement(P(text=award, stylename="ResumeText")) awards_list.addElement(awards_listitem) self.doc.text.addElement(awards_list) self.nl() def nl(self): self.doc.text.addElement(P(text="\n", stylename="ResumeText")) def close(self): self.doc.save(self.filename) def usage(msg=None): if msg: print "ERROR: %s" % (msg) print "Usage: %s -i input.xml -o output_file [-t target]" % (sys.argv[0]) print "OPTIONS:" print "-i | --input : input resume.xml file" print "-o | --output : output file name. Suffix dictates output format" print " : supported formats (txt, odt)" print "-t | --target : filters elements for target if specified" print " : (optional, default is None)" print "-h | --help : print this message" sys.exit(2) def get_writer(output): output_format = output.split(".")[-1:][0] if output_format == "txt": return TextResumeWriter(output) elif output_format == "odt": return OdfResumeWriter(output) else: return None def main(): try: (opts, args) = getopt.getopt(sys.argv[1:], "i:o:t:h", ["input", "output", "target", "help"]) except: usage() if len(opts) == 0: usage() target = None for opt in opts: (key, value) = opt if key in ("-h", "--help"): usage() elif key in ("-i", "--input"): input = value elif key in ("-o", "--output"): output = value elif key in ("-t", "--target"): target = value if input is None or output is None: usage("Input and Output is mandatory") writer = get_writer(output) if writer is None: usage("Unsupported output format") parser = XmlResumeParser(input, target) parser.parse() writer.write(parser.model) parser.close() writer.close() if __name__ == "__main__": main()

You call this from the command line using something like this:

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sujit@cyclone:resume$ ./genresume.py --input your_resume.xml \ --output your_resume.[txt|odt] \ [--target="target1+target2+...|target1,target2,..."]

Specifying an output file with suffix .txt will create a text version of the resume (suitable for dropping into the body of an email as mentioned above), and specifying an .odt suffix will create an OpenOffice text document. I had initially meant for the text version to go away once I was done, but then found that OpenOffice does not do the ODT to text conversion correctly (it misses the bullets in list items).

The behavior of the target attribute is similar to that in XmlResume. Multiple targets can be specified, separated by plus or comma. If the separator is plus, all targets must be declared in the element for it to pass through the filter (AND filtering). If the separator is comma, any one of the targets needs to be declared in the XmlResume element for it to pass through the filter (OR filtering). In addition, elements with no target attribute are always passed through the filter.

One caveat - this is not a generic solution. That is, if you were planning on running this script against your own XmlResume XML resume, it very likely won't work the way you'd expect. While I have tried to model my own resume on others that I have seen in my industry (thereby making it somewhat standards-compliant), it is quite possible that your resume contains extra information or elements that I don't need and haven't handled. But if you know a bit of Python, it should be fairly easy to modify this script to come up with something that works for you.

For reference (to match up with the parsing code above), here is a RELAX-NG like definition of the portion of the XmlResume schema that I have used in my resume.

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resume { header { naem { firstname, surname }, address { street, city, state, zip }, contact { phone, email, * } }, objective { @title, para+ }, skillarea { @title, skillset { @title, skill { @level }+ }+ }, history { @title, job { jobtitle, employer, period { from { date { year, month, day } }, to { present | date { month, year, day } } }, employer, description, achievements { achievement+ } }+ }, academics { @title, degrees { degree { level, major, institution }+ } }, awards { @title, award { title, organization, date { year } }+ } }

Programming challenges wise, my elementtree knowledge was quite rusty and I hadn't used odfpy before this, but there are enough examples on the web to get you started on either one. I tried implementing a pure event based parsing approach initially, since I needed this to allow for filtering on any element that had the target attribute, but then settled on a hybrid approach where I parse all elements in a generic way, but save the text and attribtues off some of them into a model bean, which is then written out in a specific format by the text and ODT writers. This approach makes it easier to maintain and extend the functionality (at least for me).

Just writing out the text into the ODT using odfpy was fairly simple, but it took me a while to get the formatting (font size, bolding, centering, etc) right. The API documentation supplied with the odfpy distribution is not very useful. I ultimately wrote out an unformatted document, manually applied formatting to it, unzipped the resulting ODT file and pored through the style.xml and content.xml to find the correct parameters to pass to the various odfpy functions. Once you know what to pass it, though, it works like a charm.

I believe the solution I have now works better for me than just using XmlResume. For one, (like XmlResume) it allows me to maintain a single XML file for my resume, with information targeted to different job groups or industries I might be interested in. Second, by using OpenOffice as an intermediate output, it gives me the option of automatically writing it out into multiple formats, some of which are either not possible (MS Word) or difficult (PDF) with XmlResume. Third, as a nice side effect, it also supports an email friendly text format. Fourth, it offers a simple command line interface without any additional effort. The only downside is the need to modify the code if and when I decide to add more elements into my source XML file or modify the output format.

Update 2011-11-16: Found Serna Free, a nice XML Editor from Syntext while looking for something to view larger and more complex compacted XML files at work. These files were malformed so I could not use either Firefox/Chrome or my Python xmlcat script on it, but Serna opened it without problems. It also provides a stylesheet for XmlResume. Binaries are available for (at least) Linux and Mac OSX. Just putting it here in case its useful, I will probably continue to hand-edit mine using vim.