glejeune / sh-xml

A (very) naive XML parser

sh-xml

A (very) naive XML parser for sh

-- inspired by this StackOverflow Q/A : http://stackoverflow.com/questions/893585/how-to-parse-xml-in-bash

Usage

First, copy xml_parser.sh in a place at your conveniance, then include it in your own script

. /path/to/xml_parser.sh

To parse a XML file, you need to create a function in which all the informations of all XML entities found will be sent. Then, you juste have to call the parse_xmlfunction with, as first parameter, the name of the "treatment" function created bellow and the path to the XML file, as second argument :

do_xml() {
  # ...
}
parse_xml "do_xml" /path/to/the/file.xml

In this example, the do_xml function will be called for every XML entity. In sh-xml, an XML entity correspond to the current tag found, and the following content. So, in your treatment function, you have access to the following variables :

• XML_ENTITY: The current XML entity
• XML_CONTENT : Data found after the current XML entity
• XML_TAG_NAME : Name of the current tag. If the current tag is a close tag, the heading "/" is present in the tag name
• XML_TAG_TYPE : Type of the current tag. The value can be "OPEN", "CLOSE", "EMPTY", "COMMENT" or "INSTRUCTION"
• XML_COMMENT : If the current tag is of type "COMMENT", this variable contains the text of the comment
• XML_PATH : Full XPath path of the current tag

You can also use these helper function:

has_attribute

This function take, as first parameter, the name of an attribute, and indicate if it exist within the current XML entity. Thus, this function return 1 if the attribute exist, 0 otherwise.

Example

do_xml() {
  has_attribute "password"
  if [ "$?" = "1" ] ; then
    # do something with the current XML entity
  fi
}

get_attribute_value

This function allow you to get the value of the attribute which name is passed as parameter

Example

do_xml() {
  PASSWORD_VALUE=$(get_attribute_value "password")
  # Do something with PASSWORD_VALUE
}

set_attribute_value

This function allow you to set the value of the given attribute. If the attribute exist for the current XML entity, its value is updated.

Example

do_xml() {
  set_attribute_value "password" "mYp4sSw0rD"
}

print_entity

This function allow you to print the current XML entity to stdout

Example

print_xml() {
   print_entity
}
parse_xml "print_xml" /path/to/sample.xml

terminate_parser

Terminate parsing. The end of the XML file will not be read.

Example

do_xml() {
  if [ "$XML_PATH" = "/stop/reading/here" ] ; then
    # You can either access all data for this entity
    terminate_parser
  end
}

Tests

This project use shUnit2 to perform unit tests. Just run make to run the tests suite. All tests are in the tests directory.