How to parse an xml file in a shell script

Question

I would like to know how can I split my data from the following format:

<datas> <data> <name>Name1</name> </data> <data> <name>Name2</name> </data> </datas> 

to the following format:

<data><name>Name1</name></data> <data><name>Name2</name></data> 

The parsed data would be sent to a Python script as follows:

 python script.py <data><name>Name1<name></data> python script.py <data><name>Name2<name></data> 

I have tried commands like:

echo 'cat /datas/data' | xmllint --shell file.xml 

but how can I pass the output in the desired format to the Python script?

Answer 1

I would preprocess the data with XMLStarlet:

$ xml sel -t -c '/datas/data' -nl data.xml <data> <name>Name1</name> </data><data> <name>Name2</name> </data> 

Then it depends on how you Python script wants to read this data. Hopefully, it's from a file or from standard input...

Answer 2

I'd use xslt.

the xslt stylesheet looks like this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:template match="/datas"> <xsl:apply-templates select="data"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="data"> <data><name><xsl:value-of select="./name"/></name></data><xsl:text>&#xa;</xsl:text> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> 

for the transformation use the program xsltproc.

say your input file is named in.xml

the xslt stylesheet is named in.xsl

then the call is

 xsltproc in.xsl in.xml 

output:

<?xml version="1.0"?> <data><name>Name1</name></data> <data><name>Name2</name></data>