Read elements of a xml file??????

Shell Programming and Scripting
1

Hi,

What is a good way to read elements of an xml file? i did try xmllint it doesnt provide a function to output values of a tree. In the below example when i specify from Family2 I need the name of the father then the output should be DAVE. Appreciate any help provided in this regards.

Many thanks.

for instance:

2

One way is to use sed repeatedly as the following example shows.

 sed -n '/\<Family2\>/,/\<\/Family2\>/p' file | sed -n '/\<Father\>/,/\<\/Father\>/p' | sed -n 's/\<name=\(.*\)\/\>/\1/p'

It outputs "DAVE".

A better way is to use something like the XML extension to gawk (XMLgawk)

3

the above code is not working for me. and also could you please explain me in more details about XMLgawk? Thanks

4

Does this works?

sed -n '/Family2/{n;n;s/<name=\(.*\)\/>/\1/p}' /tmp/Input

Thanks
Nagarajan G

5

thats not the solution i am looking for, actually the format could be anything like all the data in one line or multiple lines. or in any well formed format of xml. I need a generic solution to pick the element values.

Anyways, Thanks for the efforts you put in it.

6

I highly recommend using a XML::Parser for it

Its very easy to use and implement.

Initially for one of our tasks, without thinking about XML::Parser, I did wrote a mini XML::Parser which turned to be much complicated to maintain later.

Switch to parsers that are already available

7

I am not able to locate any. Could you please point me to any???