How to extract values from an xml file using shell script?

Question

I have this xml file.

<body>
<part1>
   <para1>abc</para1>
   <para2>def</para2>
   <ver>1234</ver>
</part1>    
</body>

I need to store the value given by ver i.e. 1234 in a variable.

That question isn't quite a duplicate... It's about extracting an attribute value, not the body of a tag. The answer is going to be very similar, though - just a bit different XPath expression. — Shawn
– Shawn, Commented Mar 18, 2021 at 7:02
Yes @Shawn, I went through a lot of questions in which the value was present in the tag itself. I tried modifying those answers but couldn't reach a solution. Thanks for reopening. — Yankee
– Yankee, Commented Mar 18, 2021 at 8:52

Luuk · Accepted Answer · 2021-03-18 07:47:18Z

7

Different options:

using xmlstarlet:

ver=$(xmlstarlet sel -t -m //ver -v . test.xml)

using xmllint (see also Native shell command set to extract node value from XML:

ver=$(xmllint --xpath "//ver/text()" test.xml)

Using gawk:

ver=$(gawk -F "[><]" '/<ver>/{ print $3 }' test.xml)

edited Mar 18, 2021 at 7:47

answered Mar 18, 2021 at 7:40

Luuk

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3 Comments

Ed Morton Over a year ago

The awk one (and it's common to all awks, not gawk-specific) would be more robust as awk -F'[<>]' '$2=="ver"{ print $3 }'. That would not fail if <ver> just happened to exist in some other string in the input.

Luuk Over a year ago

Thanks Ed, I will always leave some improvement for you 😁😉

Reino Over a year ago

Using xidel: ver=$(xidel -s test.xml -e '//ver') or eval "$(xidel -s test.xml -e 'ver:=//ver' --output-format=bash)"

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