1

I have a XML file(MyXML.xml) like this :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<S:Envelope xmlns:S="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
    <S:Body>
        <ns3:GetAllInfoFromRest xmlns:ns2="http://com.lanuk.cfe/b2_7/service/objects" xmlns:ns3="http://com.lanuk.cfe/b2_7/service/operations">
            1111,GH43567,Hamburger,GET,278598655,\n000001,                    ,Kunal,Bhyuo,Ramond,856 K. 98 Rd,                                        ,                                        ,Tripura,AGT,INDIA,856987,                    ,S,S,S,8956,\666666
        </ns3:GetAllInfoFromRest>
    </S:Body>
</S:Envelope>

Now i need to strip out the SOAP content and all the tag attributes from this xml and get only the string response 1111,GH43567,Hamburger,GET,278598655,\n000001, ,Kunal,Bhyuo,Ramond,856 K. 98 Rd, , ,Tripura,AGT,INDIA,856987, ,S,S,S,8956,\666666.

How can i do it with awk or sed ?

I tried it in this way :

$ xgawk -lxml 'XMLATTR["xmlns:ns3"]=="http://com.lanuk.cfe/b2_7/service/operations"{print $2}' MyXML.xml

But obviously I am making some mistake due to which it is not working. Can some one suggest any other way around this ?

Improve this question
0

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

sed/awk are really about regular expressions. check this answer on stackoverflow why parsing HTML/XML with regular expressions is a bad idea.

for XML you really need to build a DOM of the document and then find your information. there are cmdline tools like xmlstar that allow you to get information out of XML-documents.

but do not try using sed/awk to parse XML

PS: of course, you might be able to create a simple regular expression that can extract the information needed on the files you happen to encounter in real life. e.g. the following will print the 5th line of the document, which (in your example) holds the relevant information.

# stupid and naive approach:
sed '5!d' MyXML.xml

but this makes an assumption about the layout of the file, which has nothing to do with XML. it might work for a very specific generator of the given file, but is not guaranteed to work with any XML-file following the same structure (and structured data is what XML is all about)

Improve this answer
7
  • There are also XML parsers in most scripting languages - Perl, Python, Ruby... Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 13:15
  • @TheDarkKnight - Though this answers your question, it's really not a good idea to be parsing structured data such as JSON or XML using sed and awk. Use a real parser specifically suited to the data! Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 17:25
  • @slm: Can you explain like what you mean by real parser? Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 17:29
  • @TheDarkKnight - sure. A tool such as xmlstar.sourceforge.net. Also in Perl there are modules for parsing JSON or XML which give you methods for querying/manipulating the XML/JSON. Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 17:48
  • @slm my answer is all about using tools like xmlstar (2nd paragraph) rather than trying to parse XML using sed&awk (first paragraph). i tried to make clear that my trivial sed-script does not parse XML at all Commented Sep 19, 2013 at 21:00

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.