Identify empty xml files?

Question

I have a requirement to identify and write all xml file names which are empty to a text file for reporting purpose. Empty , here means the xml file has the usual header tag <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> followed by an empty open and close tag.

Sample file: 1)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<STBTests>
</STBTests>

2)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<UMTTests>
</UMTTests>

There are no data in the xml files apart from this. Any suggestions on how to approach this would be great.

Answer 1

Try this using xmllint with a xpath expression :

#!/bin/sh

for xml in *.xml; do
    bool=$(xmllint --xpath 'count(//*)=1 and string-length(//*[1])=1' "$xml")
    if [ $bool = true ]; then
        echo "$xml" >> xml_list_files
    fi
done

cat xml_list_files

The expression test that the file have only one node without any text content. In this case, the command return true

Answer 2

to identify and write all xml file names which are empty to a text file for reporting purpose

find + xmlstarlet solution:

find . -type f -name "*.xml" -exec bash -c \
'v=$(xmlstarlet sel -t -i "count(//*)=1 and //*[1][not(normalize-space())]" -o 1 -b $1);
[[ -n "$v" ]] && echo "$1" >> "empty_xml.txt"' _ {} \;

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empty_xml.txt file should contain a list of needed filenames/filepaths