data.py

#miscellaneous helper functions
import pygame #import everything pygame-related
from pygame.locals import *
from xml.dom.minidom import parse
import os

import settings

def get_node_text(node, strip_newlines=True): #get all the text from a node
    texts = []
    for n in node.childNodes: #loop through children
        if n.nodeType == n.TEXT_NODE: #if it's text
            texts.append(n.data) #store its value
    texts = "".join(texts) #combine all the text together
    if strip_newlines: #if we're supposed to remove newlines
        return texts.replace("\r", "").replace("\n", "") #do so
    return texts #return combined text

def get_xml_prop(root, name, strip_newlines=True): #get the text from a "property" node with the given name
    try:
        return get_node_text(get_node(root, name), strip_newlines)
    except:
        return None

def get_node(root, name): #find a node with a given name
    return root.getElementsByTagName(name)[0]

def get_path(path, with_data=True): #convert a path to one appropriate for the host with the data directory
    path = path.replace("\\", "/") #convert backslashes to forward slashes
    if with_data: #if we're prepending the data directory
        ret = get_path(settings.data_path, False) #get it
    else: #if we aren't
        ret = "" #start with a blank string
    for part in path.split("/"): #loop through path components
        ret = os.path.join(ret, part) #join them together
    return ret #return finished product

def load_image(path): #load an image
    return pygame.image.load(get_path(path))

def load_xml(path): #load xml data
    return parse(get_path(path))