CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xmlunixxpathcommand-line-interface
Charles L Wilcox
Charles L Wilcox

Reputation: 1124

*NIX CLI: Filter, Query XML Attribute and Display

Given the file:

/// @file test.xml
<xml-fragment>
  <string name="foo" value="bar"/>
</xml-fragment>

the path xml-fragment/string and the attribute&value name="foo" to filter on, and the attribute value to query on, how should I get "bar"?

Using xmlstarlet, I have this:

xmlstarlet sel -t -m '/xml-fragment/string[attribute::name="foo"]' \
                  -v 'attribute::bar' test.xml

which appears to work, but I'm wondering if there is a better way?

I don't even require using xmlstarlet; I previously tried xmllint, xsltproc, and xpath, but couldn't get those to work.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 50

Answers (1)

Daniel Haley
Daniel Haley

Reputation: 52888

I'm not sure if this is "better", but you could just use -v with the entire xpath. You could also use the @ abbreviated syntax.

Example (tested in windows; quotes might need to be changed)

xmlstarlet sel -t -v "/xml-fragment/string[@name='foo']/@value" test.xml

Any of the other tools you listed should work as well. If you're just getting a value, xsltproc might be overkill. As long as you're not using regex, you should be ok.

Upvotes: 1

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