Question

So, I have used XPath before to take data from a XML sheet and print it out so that

Property1 – Property2 – Property3

are displayed like that. Now, I want to do the same in Linux Bash. I know how to use Linux Bash a little, and was able to get some of it to print out, but not like I needed it to.

Here is an example of how the XML sheet will look

<xml>
<content>
<items>
<item>
<name>I need this information</name>
<item>

<lists>
<list>
<name>I DONT need this information</name>
</list>

<hello>
<name> I need this information also</name>
<hello>

Notice that I have three instances of name so I cant simply use
cat xmlfile | grep “name”
since there is more than one place that has name

Thanks!

Answer 1

Use XMLStarlet to execute your query as XPath.

xmlstarlet sel -t \
  -m //item/name  -v . \  # print first item name
  -o ' - ' \              # print intermediate dash
  -m //hello/name -v . \  # print second item
  -n                      # print trailing newline

Also, some very new versions of xmllint have a --xpath argument which can be used to run queries.