How can I get the value from an attribute using xmllint and XPath?

Question

I want to get the value of name and put it in a variable using XMLLint

echo \'cat //body         


        

Answer 1

An approach with a helper awk command that supports multiple attributes (a streamlined version of ego's approach):

echo 'cat //*/@name' | xmllint --shell file | awk -F\" 'NR % 2 == 0 { print $2 }'

The awk command:

• splits xmllint's output lines into fields by " chars. (-F\")

  • Note that xmllint normalizes quoting around attribute values to "..." on output, even if the input had '...', so it's sufficient to split by ".

• only processes even-numbered lines (NR %2 == 0), thereby filtering out the separator lines that cat invariably prints.

• print $2 then prints only the 2nd field, which is the value of each attribute without the enclosing "...".

Assuming the following sample XML in file:

the above yields:

abc
def