Tips for parsing xml in a shell script?

Question

Hello,
I'm writing a shell script to extract info from an xml file to create various text files that share data in the form of custom entities declared at the top of the document (product id, name, version, copyright date, etc.). So far I'm using xmllint which is working well. I'm extracting text for my project files using xmllint --shell:
<pre style="padding-left: .75ex; padding-top: .25em; padding-bottom: .25em; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em; margin-left: 1ex; max-width: 80ex; overflow: auto; font-size: 10px; font-family: Monaco, 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; color: #222; background: #eee; line-height: normal">echo cat lls_cd_product/plist | xmllint --noent --shell xyz.xml | sed -e '1d; $d'</pre>
This is working well, but --shell mode adds an extra line to the beginning and end which I let sed cleanup, but then I need to strip the enclosing tags as well.
Xmllint does a good job of filling in my entities with the exception of MacRoman bullet characters that I've entered as &#165;. These are just converted to the same entity in hex, &#xA5;. I suppose I can replace those with sed, but that's starting to feel kludgey.
I'm beginning to wonder if there may be a better way to do this. I'm not very familiar with XSL, but I am considering ramping up on that.
Any suggestions would be welcome.
Cole

Answer 1

etresoft wrote:
It may be a few hours before I get time to work on it.
Or not.
Here is your XML file:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<info>
<ver>2.1.1</ver>
<tag>abc</tag>
<name>Product Name</name>
<filename>productname</filename>
<copyright>2008</copyright>
</info>
This generates the cd product file:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version = '1.0' xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'>
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"
doctype-system="http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"
doctype-public="-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"/>
<!-- You could access addition data from some other XML file. -->
<!-- <xsl:variable name="data" select="document('data.xml')/data"/> -->
<xsl:template match="info">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>hfs-openfolder</key>
<string>.</string>
<key>hfs-volume-name</key>
<string><xsl:value-of select="name"/></string>
<key>hide-hfs</key>
<string>./{Norton,*.txt,*.exe,.inf}</string>
<key>hide-iso</key>
<string>./{PDS,*Rename,readme,.Volume*,Norton*,*icns,Run*.app,Icon*,Desktop*,TheFolder}</string>
<key>hide-joliet</key>
<string>./{PDS,*Rename,readme,.Volume*,Norton*,*icns,Run*.app,Icon*,Desktop*,TheFolder}</string>
<key>iso-volume-name</key>
<string><xsl:value-of select="tag"/></string>
<key>joliet-volume-name</key>
<string><xsl:value-of select="name"/></string>
</dict>
</plist>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
and this generates the Mac read me file in XML:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version = '1.0' xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'>
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"/>
<!-- You could access addition data from some other XML file. -->
<!-- <xsl:variable name="data" select="document('data.xml')/data"/> -->
<xsl:template match="info">
<!-- You don't have to deal with these entities anymore. You should be
able to save this xsl file in UTF-8 format and just type in the
bullets. But the entities work too. -->
<readme_mac><xsl:value-of select="concat(name, ' ', ver)"/>
Copyright <xsl:value-of select="copyright"/>, Laureate Learning Systems¨, Inc.
Minimum System Requirements:
¥ 300 MHz or faster PowerPC, Intel or better CPU
¥ Mac OS 8.1 or later, including any Mac OS X
¥ 64 MB available RAM
¥ 60 MB available disk space
</readme_mac>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
This one will output the readme in HTML:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version = '1.0' xmlns:xsl='http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform'>
<xsl:output method="html" indent="yes" version="4.0" encoding="UTF-8"/>
<!-- You could access addition data from some other XML file. -->
<!-- <xsl:variable name="data" select="document('data.xml')/data"/> -->
<xsl:template match="info">
<!-- You don't have to deal with these entities anymore. You should be
able to save this xsl file in UTF-8 format and just type in the
bullets. But the entities work too. -->
<html>
<head>
<title><xsl:value-of select="concat(name, ' ', ver)"/></title>
</head>
<body>
<xsl:value-of select="concat(name, ' ', ver)"/>
Copyright <xsl:value-of select="copyright"/>, Laureate Learning Systems¨, Inc.
Minimum System Requirements:
300 MHz or faster PowerPC, Intel or better CPU
Mac OS 8.1 or later, including any Mac OS X
64 MB available RAM
60 MB available disk space
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Yes. I do enjoy XSL quite a bit