Extraction of data from a simple XML file

user_248901 0
Viewed 94467

I've a XML file with the contents:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<job xmlns="http://www.sample.com/">programming</job>

I need a way to extract what is in the <job..> </job> tags, programmin in this case. This should be done on linux command prompt, using grep/sed/awk.

sed grep awk xml bash
10 Answers

Do you really have to use only those tools? They're not designed for XML processing, and although it's possible to get something that works OK most of the time, it will fail on edge cases, like encoding, line breaks, etc.

I recommend xml_grep:

xml_grep 'job' jobs.xml --text_only

Which gives the output:

programming

On ubuntu/debian, xml_grep is in the xml-twig-tools package.

user_33060 
 grep '<job' file_name | cut -f2 -d">"|cut -f1 -d"<"
user_1347130

just use awk, no need other external tools. Below works if your desired tags appears in multitine.

$ cat file
test
<job xmlns="http://www.sample.com/">programming</job>
<job xmlns="http://www.sample.com/">
programming</job>

$ awk -vRS="</job>" '{gsub(/.*<job.*>/,"");print}' file
programming

programming
user_1315270

Assuming same line, input from stdin:

sed -ne '/<\/job>/ { s/<[^>]*>\(.*\)<\/job>/\1/; p }'

notes: -n stops it outputting everything automatically; -e means it's a one-liner (aot a script) /<\/job> acts like a grep; s strips the opentag + attributes and endtag; ; is a new statement; p prints; {} makes the grep apply to both statements, as one.

13ren_509790

How about:

cat a.xml | grep '<job' | cut -d '>' -f 2 | cut -d '<' -f 1
user_2276650

yourxmlfile.xml

<item> 
  <title>15:54:57 - George:</title>
  <description>Diane DeConn? You saw Diane DeConn!</description> 
</item> 
<item> 
  <title>15:55:17 - Jerry:</title> 
  <description>Something huh?</description>
</item>

grep 'title' yourxmlfile.xml

  <title>15:54:57 - George:</title>
  <title>15:55:17 - Jerry:</title>

grep 'title' yourxmlfile.xml | awk -F">" '{print $2}'

  15:54:57 - George:</title
  15:55:17 - Jerry:</title

grep 'title' yourxmlfile.xml | awk -F">" '{print $2}' | awk -F"<" '{print $1}'

  15:54:57 - George:
  15:55:17 - Jerry:
user_31104880
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