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Introduction</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm11">1. About XmlStarlet</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm25">2. Main Features</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm58">3. Supported Platforms</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm83">4. Finding binary packages</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#idm118">2. Installation</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm120">1. Installation on Linux</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm127">2. Installation on Solaris</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm131">3. Installation on MacOS X</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm135">4. Installation on Windows</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#idm139">3. Getting Started</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm141">1. Basic Command-Line Options</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm145">2. Studying Structure of XML Document</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#idm169">4. XmlStarlet Reference</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm172">1. Querying XML documents</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm268">2. Transforming XML documents</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm278">3. Editing XML documents</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm308">4. Validating XML documents</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm320">5. Formatting XML documents</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm334">6. Canonicalization of XML documents</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm350">7. XML and PYX format</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm368">8. Escape/Unescape special XML characters</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm378">9. List directory as XML</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#idm386">5. Common problems</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm388">1. Namespaces and default namespace</a></span></dt><dd><dl><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="#idm390">1.1. The Problem: Why does nothing match?</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="#idm398">1.2. The Solution</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="#idm402">1.3. A More Convenient Solution</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect2"><a href="#idm411">1.4. Deleting namespace declarations </a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm420">2. Special characters</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm432">3. Sorting</a></span></dt><dt><span class="sect1"><a href="#idm440">4. Validation</a></span></dt></dl></dd><dt><span class="chapter"><a href="#idm445">6. Other XmlStarlet Resources</a></span></dt></dl></div><div class="chapter"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a name="idm9"></a>Chapter 1. Introduction</h1></div></div></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm11"></a>1. About XmlStarlet</h2></div></div></div><p><a class="link" href="http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/" target="_top">XMLStarlet</a> is
a set of command line utilities (tools) which can be used to transform,
query, validate, and edit XML documents and files using simple set of
shell commands in similar way it is done for plain text files using UNIX
grep, sed, awk, diff, patch, join, etc commands.</p><p>This set of command line utilities can be used by those who deal
with many XML documents on UNIX shell command prompt as well as for
automated XML processing with shell scripts.</p><p>XMLStarlet command line utility is written in C and uses libxml2
and libxslt from <a class="link" href="http://xmlsoft.org/" target="_top">http://xmlsoft.org/</a>. Implementation of
extensive choice of options for XMLStarlet utility was only possible
because of rich feature set of libxml2 and libxslt (many thanks to the
developers of those libraries for great work).</p><p>'diff' and 'patch' options are not currently implemented. Other
features need some work too. Please, send an email to the project
administrator (see <a class="link" href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmlstar/" target="_top">http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmlstar/</a>)
if you wish to help.</p><p>XMLStarlet is linked statically to both libxml2 and libxslt, so
generally all you need to process XML documents is one executable file.
To run XmlStarlet utility you can simple type 'xmlstarlet' on command line and
see list of options available.</p><p>XMLStarlet is open source freeware under MIT license which allows
free use and distribution for both commercial and non-commercial
projects.</p><p>We welcome any user's feedback on this project which would greatly
help us to improve its quality. Comments, suggestions, feature requests,
bug reports can be done via SourceForge project web site (see <a class="link" href="http://sourceforge.net/p/xmlstar/discussion/" target="_top">XMLStarlet
Sourceforge forums</a>, or <a class="link" href="http://sourceforge.net/p/xmlstar/mailman/" target="_top">XMLStarlet
mailing list</a>)</p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm25"></a>2. Main Features</h2></div></div></div><p>The toolkit's feature set includes options to:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>Check or validate XML files (simple well-formedness check,
DTD, XSD, RelaxNG)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Calculate values of XPath expressions on XML files (such as
running sums, etc)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Search XML files for matches to given XPath expressions</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Apply XSLT stylesheets to XML documents (including EXSLT
support, and passing parameters to stylesheets)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Query XML documents (ex. query for value of some elements of
attributes, sorting, etc)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Modify or edit XML documents (ex. delete some elements)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Format or "beautify" XML documents (as changing indentation,
etc)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Fetch XML documents using http:// or ftp:// URLs</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Browse tree structure of XML documents (in similar way to 'ls'
command for directories)</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Include one XML document into another using XInclude</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>XML c14n canonicalization</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Escape/unescape special XML characters in input text</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Print directory as XML document</p></li><li class="listitem"><p>Convert XML into PYX format (based on ESIS - ISO 8879), and
vice versa</p></li></ul></div><p></p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm58"></a>3. Supported Platforms</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is a list of platforms on which XmlStarlet is known to
work.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>Linux</p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>Solaris</p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>Windows</p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>MacOS X</p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>FreeBSD/NetBSD</p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>HP-UX</p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>AIX</p></li></ul></div><p>You might be able to compile and make it on others too.</p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm83"></a>4. Finding binary packages</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is a list of sites where you can also find XmlStarlet binary
packages.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://www.suse.com/us/private/products/suse_linux/prof/packages_professional/xmlstarlet.html" target="_top">SuSE
Packages</a></p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/rpm-navigation.php?cat=%2FUtilities%2Fxmlstarlet/" target="_top">SuSE
Guru's RPM Site</a></p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/ports.cgi?query=xmlstarlet&stype=all" target="_top">FreeBSD
Ports</a></p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://www.freshports.org/textproc/xmlstarlet/" target="_top">FreeBSD Fresh
Ports</a></p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://fink.sourceforge.net/pdb/package.php/xmlstarlet" target="_top">Mac OS
Fink</a></p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://rpms.mandrakeclub.com/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=xmlstarlet" target="_top">Mandrake
RPMs</a></p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://gentoo-portage.com/app-text/xmlstarlet" target="_top">Gentoo
Portage</a></p></li></ul></div><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://packages.debian.org/stable/text/xmlstarlet" target="_top">Debian</a></p></li></ul></div></div></div><div class="chapter"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a name="idm118"></a>Chapter 2. Installation</h1></div></div></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm120"></a>1. Installation on Linux</h2></div></div></div><p>Execute the following command as root</p><pre class="programlisting">rpm -i xmlstarlet-x.x.x-1.i386.rpm</pre><p>where x.x.x indicates package version.</p><p>You can use <a class="link" href="http://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/rpm2html/search.php?query=xmlstarlet&system=&arch=" target="_top">http://rpmfind.net</a>
to search for RPM appropriate for your distribution.</p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm127"></a>2. Installation on Solaris</h2></div></div></div><p>Execute the following commands as root</p><pre class="programlisting">gunzip xmlstarlet-x.x.x-sol8-sparc-local.gz
pkgadd -d xmlstarlet-x.x.x-sol8-sparc-local all</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm131"></a>3. Installation on MacOS X</h2></div></div></div><p>XmlStarlet is available on MacOS in Fink. <a class="link" href="http://fink.sourceforge.net/pdb/package.php/xmlstarlet" target="_top">See
fink.sourceforge.net</a></p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm135"></a>4. Installation on Windows</h2></div></div></div><p>Unzip the file xmlstarlet-x.x.x-win32.zip to some directory. To
take advantage of UNIX shell scripting you might want to run XmlStarlet
from Cygwin. Consider installing <a class="link" href="http://www.cygwin.com/" target="_top">Cygwin</a> on your Windows
machine.</p></div></div><div class="chapter"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a name="idm139"></a>Chapter 3. Getting Started</h1></div></div></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm141"></a>1. Basic Command-Line Options</h2></div></div></div><p>Basic command line syntax: </p><pre class="programlisting">bash-2.03$ xmlstarlet
XMLStarlet Toolkit: Command line utilities for XML
Usage: xmlstarlet [<options>] <command> [<cmd-options>]
where <command> is one of:
ed (or edit) - Edit/Update XML document(s)
sel (or select) - Select data or query XML document(s) (XPATH, etc)
tr (or transform) - Transform XML document(s) using XSLT
val (or validate) - Validate XML document(s) (well-formed/DTD/XSD/RelaxNG)
fo (or format) - Format XML document(s)
el (or elements) - Display element structure of XML document
c14n (or canonic) - XML canonicalization
ls (or list) - List directory as XML
esc (or escape) - Escape special XML characters
unesc (or unescape) - Unescape special XML characters
pyx (or xmln) - Convert XML into PYX format (based on ESIS - ISO 8879)
p2x (or depyx) - Convert PYX into XML
<options> are:
-q or --quiet - no error output
--doc-namespace - extract namespace bindings from input doc (default)
--no-doc-namespace - don't extract namespace bindings from input doc
--version - show version
--help - show help
Wherever file name mentioned in command help it is assumed
that URL can be used instead as well.
Type: xmlstarlet <command> --help <ENTER> for command help
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm145"></a>2. Studying Structure of XML Document</h2></div></div></div><p>Before you do anything with your XML document you probably would
like to know its structure at first. 'el' option could be used for this
purpose.</p><p>Let's say you have the following XML document (table.xml)</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<rec id="1">
<numField>123</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="2">
<numField>346</numField>
<stringField>Text Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="3">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</rec>
</table>
</xml></pre><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet el table.xml</pre><p>would produce the following output.</p><pre class="programlisting">xml
xml/table
xml/table/rec
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField
xml/table/rec
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField
xml/table/rec
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField</pre><p>Every line in this output is an XPath expression which indicates a
'path' to elements in XML document. You would use these XPath
expressions to navigate through your XML documents in other XmlStarlet
options.</p><p>XML documents can be pretty large but with a very simple
structure. (This is espesially true for data driven XML documents ex:
XML formatted result of select from SQL table). If you just interested
in structure but not order of the elements you can use -u switch
combined with 'el' option.</p><p>EXAMPLE:</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet el -u table.xml</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">xml
xml/table
xml/table/rec
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField</pre><p>If you are interested not just in elements of your XML document,
but you want to see attributes as well you can use -a switch with 'el'
option. And every line of the output will still be a valid XPath
expression.</p><p>EXAMPLE:</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet el -a table.xml</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">xml
xml/table
xml/table/rec
xml/table/rec/@id
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField
xml/table/rec
xml/table/rec/@id
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField
xml/table/rec
xml/table/rec/@id
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField</pre><p>If you are looking for attribute values as well use -v switch of
'el' option. And again - every line of output is a valid XPath
expression.</p><p>EXAMPLE:</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet el -v table.xml</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">xml
xml/table
xml/table/rec[@id='1']
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField
xml/table/rec[@id='2']
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField
xml/table/rec[@id='3']
xml/table/rec/numField
xml/table/rec/stringField</pre></div></div><div class="chapter"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a name="idm169"></a>Chapter 4. XmlStarlet Reference</h1></div></div></div><p></p><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm172"></a>1. Querying XML documents</h2></div></div></div><p>XmlStarlet 'select' or 'sel' option can be used to query or search
XML documents. Here is synopsis for 'xmlstarlet sel' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">XMLStarlet Toolkit: Select from XML document(s)
Usage: xmlstarlet sel <global-options> {<template>} [ <xml-file> ... ]
where
<global-options> - global options for selecting
<xml-file> - input XML document file name/uri (stdin is used if missing)
<template> - template for querying XML document with following syntax:
<global-options> are:
-Q or --quiet - do not write anything to standard output.
-C or --comp - display generated XSLT
-R or --root - print root element <xsl-select>
-T or --text - output is text (default is XML)
-I or --indent - indent output
-D or --xml-decl - do not omit xml declaration line
-B or --noblanks - remove insignificant spaces from XML tree
-E or --encode <encoding> - output in the given encoding (utf-8, unicode...)
-N <name>=<value> - predefine namespaces (name without 'xmlns:')
ex: xsql=urn:oracle-xsql
Multiple -N options are allowed.
--net - allow fetch DTDs or entities over network
--help - display help
Syntax for templates: -t|--template <options>
where <options>
-c or --copy-of <xpath> - print copy of XPATH expression
-v or --value-of <xpath> - print value of XPATH expression
-o or --output <string> - output string literal
-n or --nl - print new line
-f or --inp-name - print input file name (or URL)
-m or --match <xpath> - match XPATH expression
--var <name> <value> --break or
--var <name>=<value> - declare a variable (referenced by $name)
-i or --if <test-xpath> - check condition <xsl:if test="test-xpath">
--elif <test-xpath> - check condition if previous conditions failed
--else - check if previous conditions failed
-e or --elem <name> - print out element <xsl:element name="name">
-a or --attr <name> - add attribute <xsl:attribute name="name">
-b or --break - break nesting
-s or --sort op xpath - sort in order (used after -m) where
op is X:Y:Z,
X is A - for order="ascending"
X is D - for order="descending"
Y is N - for data-type="numeric"
Y is T - for data-type="text"
Z is U - for case-order="upper-first"
Z is L - for case-order="lower-first"
There can be multiple --match, --copy-of, --value-of, etc options
in a single template. The effect of applying command line templates
can be illustrated with the following XSLT analogue
xmlstarlet sel -t -c "xpath0" -m "xpath1" -m "xpath2" -v "xpath3" \
-t -m "xpath4" -c "xpath5"
is equivalent to applying the following XSLT
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:call-template name="t1"/>
<xsl:call-template name="t2"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="t1">
<xsl:copy-of select="xpath0"/>
<xsl:for-each select="xpath1">
<xsl:for-each select="xpath2">
<xsl:value-of select="xpath3"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="t2">
<xsl:for-each select="xpath4">
<xsl:copy-of select="xpath5"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
</pre><p>'select' option allows you basically avoid writting XSLT
stylesheet to perform some queries on XML documents. I.e. various
combinations of command line parameters will let you to generate XSLT
stylesheet and apply in to XML documents with a single command line.
Very often you do not really care what XSLT was created for you 'select'
command, but in those cases when you do; you can always use -C or --comp
switch which will let you see exactly which XSLT is applied to your
input.</p><p>'select' option supports many EXSLT functions in XPath
expressions.</p><p>Here are few examples which will help to understand how 'xmlstarlet
select' works:</p><p>EXAMPLE:</p><p>Count elements matching XPath expression:</p><p></p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -t -v "count(/xml/table/rec/numField)" table.xml</pre><p>Input (table.xml):</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<rec id="1">
<numField>123</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="2">
<numField>346</numField>
<stringField>Text Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="3">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</rec>
</table>
</xml></pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">3
</pre><p>Let's take a close look what it did internally. For that we will
use '-C' option</p><pre class="programlisting">$ xmlstarlet sel -C -t -v "count(/xml/table/rec/numField)"
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
xmlns:exslt="http://exslt.org/common"
xmlns:math="http://exslt.org/math"
xmlns:date="http://exslt.org/dates-and-times"
xmlns:func="http://exslt.org/functions"
xmlns:set="http://exslt.org/sets"
xmlns:str="http://exslt.org/strings"
xmlns:dyn="http://exslt.org/dynamic"
xmlns:saxon="http://icl.com/saxon"
xmlns:xalanredirect="org.apache.xalan.xslt.extensions.Redirect"
xmlns:xt="http://www.jclark.com/xt"
xmlns:libxslt="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/namespace"
xmlns:test="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/"
extension-element-prefixes=
"exslt math date func set str dyn saxon xalanredirect xt libxslt test"
exclude-result-prefixes="math str">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no"/>
<xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:call-template name="t1"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="t1">
<xsl:value-of select="count(/xml/table/rec/numField)"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet></pre><p>Ignoring some XSLT stuff to make it brief:</p><pre class="programlisting"><xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no"/>
<xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:call-template name="t1"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="t1">
<xsl:value-of select="count(/xml/table/rec/numField)"/>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet></pre><p>Every -t option is mapped into XSLT template. Options after '-t'
are mapped into XSLT elements:</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p>-v to <xsl:value-of></p></li><li class="listitem"><p>-c to <xsl:copy-of></p></li><li class="listitem"><p>-e to <xsl:element></p></li><li class="listitem"><p>-a to <xsl:attribute></p></li><li class="listitem"><p>-s to <xsl:sort></p></li><li class="listitem"><p>-m to <xsl:for-each></p></li><li class="listitem"><p>-i to <xsl:if></p></li><li class="listitem"><p>and so on</p></li></ul></div><p>By default subsequent options (for instance: -m) will result in
nested corresponding XSLT elements (<xsl:for-each> for '-m'). To
break this nesting you would have to put '-b' or '--break' after first
'-m'.</p><p>Below are few more examples:</p><p>EXAMPLE</p><p>Count all nodes in XML documents. Print input name and node count
after it.</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -t -f -o " " -v "count(//node())" xml/table.xml xml/tab-obj.xml</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">xml/table.xml 32
xml/tab-obj.xml 41</pre><p></p><p>EXAMPLE</p><p>Find XML files matching XPath expression (containing 'object'
element)</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -t -m //object -f xml/table.xml xml/tab-obj.xml</pre><p>Result output:</p><pre class="programlisting">xml/tab-obj.xml</pre><p></p><p>EXAMPLE</p><p>Calculate EXSLT (XSLT extentions) XPath value</p><pre class="programlisting">echo "<x/>" | xmlstarlet sel -t -v "math:abs(-1000)"</pre><p>Result output:</p><pre class="programlisting">1000</pre><p></p><p>EXAMPLE</p><p>Adding elements and attributes using command line 'xmlstarlet sel'</p><pre class="programlisting">echo "<x/>" | xmlstarlet sel -t -m / -e xml -e child -a data -o value</pre><p>Result Output:</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml><child data="value"/></xml></pre><p></p><p>EXAMPLE</p><p>Query XML document and produce sorted text table</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -T -t -m /xml/table/rec -s D:N:- "@id" \
-v "concat(@id,'|',numField,'|',stringField)" -n xml/table.xml</pre><p>Result Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">3|-23|stringValue
2|346|Text Value
1|123|String Value</pre><p>Equivalent stylesheet</p><pre class="programlisting"><xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no" method="text"/>
<xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:call-template name="t1"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="t1">
<xsl:for-each select="/xml/table/rec">
<xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number"
case-order="upper-first" select="@id"/>
<xsl:value-of select="concat(@id,'|',numField,'|',stringField)"/>
<xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet></pre><p></p><p>EXAMPLE</p><p>Predefine namespaces for XPath expressions</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -N xsql=urn:oracle-xsql -t -v /xsql:query xsql/jobserve.xsql</pre><p>Input (xsql/jobserve.xsql)</p><pre class="programlisting">$ cat xsql/jobserve.xsql
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="jobserve.xsl"?>
<xsql:query connection="jobs" xmlns:xsql="urn:oracle-xsql" max-rows="5">
SELECT substr(title,1,26) short_title, title, location, skills
FROM job
WHERE UPPER(title) LIKE '%ORACLE%'
ORDER BY first_posted DESC
</xsql:query></pre><p>Result output</p><pre class="programlisting"> SELECT substr(title,1,26) short_title, title, location, skills
FROM job
WHERE UPPER(title) LIKE '%ORACLE%'
ORDER BY first_posted DESC
</pre><p></p><p>EXAMPLE</p><p>Print structure of XML element using xmlstarlet sel (advanced XPath
expressions and xmlstarlet sel command usage)</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -T -t -m '//*' \
-m 'ancestor-or-self::*' -v 'name()' -i 'not(position()=last())' -o . -b -b -n \
xml/structure.xml</pre><p>Input (xml/structure.xml)</p><pre class="programlisting"><a1>
<a11>
<a111>
<a1111/>
</a111>
<a112>
<a1121/>
</a112>
</a11>
<a12/>
<a13>
<a131/>
</a13>
</a1></pre><p>Result Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">a1
a1.a11
a1.a11.a111
a1.a11.a111.a1111
a1.a11.a112
a1.a11.a112.a1121
a1.a12
a1.a13
a1.a13.a131</pre><p>This example is a good demonstration of nesting control. Here is
corresponding XSLT:</p><pre class="programlisting"><xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no" method="text"/>
<xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:call-template name="t1"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="t1">
<xsl:for-each select="//*">
<xsl:for-each select="ancestor-or-self::*">
<xsl:value-of select="name()"/>
<xsl:if test="not(position()=last())">
<xsl:value-of select="'.'"/>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
<xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet></pre><p></p><p></p><p>EXAMPLE</p><p>Print all links of xhtml document</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel --net --html -T -t -m "//*[local-name()='a']" \
-o 'NAME: ' -v "translate(. , '&#10;', ' ')" -n \
-o 'LINK: ' -v @href -n -n \
http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/</pre><p>Sample output</p><pre class="programlisting">NAME: XmlStarlet SourceForge Site
LINK: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmlstar/
NAME: XmlStarlet CVS Source
LINK: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/xmlstar/
NAME: XmlStarlet on Freshmeat.Net
LINK: http://freshmeat.net/projects/xmlstarlet/
NAME: XMLStarlet Sourceforge forums
LINK: http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=66612
NAME: XMLStarlet mailing list
LINK: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlstar-devel
</pre><p></p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm268"></a>2. Transforming XML documents</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is synopsis for 'xmlstarlet tr' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">XMLStarlet Toolkit: Transform XML document(s) using XSLT
Usage: xmlstarlet tr [<options>] <xsl-file> {-p|-s <name>=<value>} [ <xml-file-or-uri> ... ]
where
<xsl-file> - main XSLT stylesheet for transformation
<xml-file> - input XML document file name (stdin is used if missing)
<name>=<value> - name and value of the parameter passed to XSLT processor
-p - parameter is XPATH expression ("'string'" to quote string)
-s - parameter is a string literal
<options> are:
--omit-decl - omit xml declaration <?xml version="1.0"?>
--show-ext - show list of extensions
--val - allow validate against DTDs or schemas
--net - allow fetch DTDs or entities over network
--xinclude - do XInclude processing on document input
--maxdepth val - increase the maximum depth
--html - input document(s) is(are) in HTML format
--catalogs - use SGML catalogs from $SGML_CATALOG_FILES
otherwise XML catalogs starting from
file:///etc/xml/catalog are activated by default
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)
Current implementation uses libxslt from GNOME codebase as XSLT processor
(see http://xmlsoft.org/ for more details)
</pre><p>EXAMPLE:</p><pre class="programlisting"># Transform passing parameters to XSLT stylesheet
xmlstarlet tr xsl/param1.xsl -p Count='count(/xml/table/rec)' -s Text="Count=" xml/table.xml
</pre><p>Input xsl/params1.xsl</p><pre class="programlisting"><xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="text"/>
<xsl:param name="Text"/>
<xsl:param name="Count"/>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:call-template name="t1"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="t1">
<xsl:for-each select="/xml">
<xsl:value-of select="$Text"/>
<xsl:value-of select="$Count"/>
<xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet></pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting">Count=3
</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm278"></a>3. Editing XML documents</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is the synopsis for 'xmlstarlet ed' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">XMLStarlet Toolkit: Edit XML document(s)
Usage: xmlstarlet ed <global-options> {<action>} [ <xml-file-or-uri> ... ]
where
<global-options> - global options for editing
<xml-file-or-uri> - input XML document file name/uri (stdin is used if missing)
<global-options> are:
-P (or --pf) - preserve original formatting
-S (or --ps) - preserve non-significant spaces
-O (or --omit-decl) - omit XML declaration (<?xml ...?>)
-N <name>=<value> - predefine namespaces (name without 'xmlns:')
ex: xsql=urn:oracle-xsql
Multiple -N options are allowed.
-N options must be last global options.
--help or -h - display help
where <action>
-d or --delete <xpath>
-i or --insert <xpath> -t (--type) elem|text|attr -n <name> -v (--value) <value>
-a or --append <xpath> -t (--type) elem|text|attr -n <name> -v (--value) <value>
-s or --subnode <xpath> -t (--type) elem|text|attr -n <name> -v (--value) <value>
-m or --move <xpath1> <xpath2>
-r or --rename <xpath1> -v <new-name>
-u or --update <xpath> -v (--value) <value>
-x (--expr) <xpath>
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)
</pre><p>EXAMPLE:</p><pre class="programlisting"># Delete elements matching XPath expression
xmlstarlet ed -d "/xml/table/rec[@id='2']" xml/table.xml
</pre><p>Input</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<rec id="1">
<numField>123</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="2">
<numField>346</numField>
<stringField>Text Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="3">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</rec>
</table>
</xml>
</pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<rec id="1">
<numField>123</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="3">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</rec>
</table>
</xml>
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Move element node
echo '<x id="1"><a/><b/></x>' | xmlstarlet ed -m "//b" "//a"
</pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting"><x id="1">
<a>
<b/>
</a>
</x>
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Rename attributes
xmlstarlet ed -r "//*/@id" -v ID xml/tab-obj.xml
</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<rec ID="1">
<numField>123</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
<object name="Obj1">
<property name="size">10</property>
<property name="type">Data</property>
</object>
</rec>
<rec ID="2">
<numField>346</numField>
<stringField>Text Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec ID="3">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</rec>
</table>
</xml>
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Rename elements
xmlstarlet ed -r "/xml/table/rec" -v record xml/tab-obj.xml
</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<record id="1">
<numField>123</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
<object name="Obj1">
<property name="size">10</property>
<property name="type">Data</property>
</object>
</record>
<record id="2">
<numField>346</numField>
<stringField>Text Value</stringField>
</record>
<record id="3">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</record>
</table>
</xml>
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Update value of an attribute
xmlstarlet ed -u "/xml/table/rec[@id=3]/@id" -v 5 xml/tab-obj.xml
</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<rec id="1">
<numField>123</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
<object name="Obj1">
<property name="size">10</property>
<property name="type">Data</property>
</object>
</rec>
<rec id="2">
<numField>346</numField>
<stringField>Text Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="5">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</rec>
</table>
</xml>
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Update value of an element
xmlstarlet ed -u "/xml/table/rec[@id=1]/numField" -v 0 xml/tab-obj.xml
</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<rec id="1">
<numField>0</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
<object name="Obj1">
<property name="size">10</property>
<property name="type">Data</property>
</object>
</rec>
<rec id="2">
<numField>346</numField>
<stringField>Text Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="3">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</rec>
</table>
</xml>
</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm308"></a>4. Validating XML documents</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is synopsis for 'xmlstarlet val' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">XMLStarlet Toolkit: Validate XML document(s)
Usage: xmlstarlet val <options> [ <xml-file-or-uri> ... ]
where <options>
-w or --well-formed - validate well-formedness only (default)
-d or --dtd <dtd-file> - validate against DTD
-s or --xsd <xsd-file> - validate against XSD schema
-r or --relaxng <rng-file> - validate against Relax-NG schema
-e or --err - print verbose error messages on stderr
-b or --list-bad - list only files which do not validate
-g or --list-good - list only files which validate
-q or --quiet - do not list files (return result code only)
NOTE: XML Schemas are not fully supported yet due to its incomplete
support in libxml (see http://xmlsoft.org)
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Validate XML document against DTD
xmlstarlet val --dtd dtd/table.dtd xml/tab-obj.xml >/dev/null 2>&1; echo $?
</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">1
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Validate against XSD schema
xmlstarlet val -b -s xsd/table.xsd xml/table.xml xml/tab-obj.xml 2>/dev/null; echo $?
</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting">xml/tab-obj.xml
1
</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm320"></a>5. Formatting XML documents</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is synopsis for 'xmlstarlet fo' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">XMLStarlet Toolkit: Format XML document
Usage: xmlstarlet fo [<options>] <xml-file>
where <options> are
-n or --noindent - do not indent
-t or --indent-tab - indent output with tabulation
-s or --indent-spaces <num> - indent output with <num> spaces
-o or --omit-decl - omit xml declaration <?xml version="1.0"?>
-R or --recover - try to recover what is parsable
-D or --dropdtd - remove the DOCTYPE of the input docs
-C or --nocdata - replace cdata section with text nodes
-N or --nsclean - remove redundant namespace declarations
-e or --encode <encoding> - output in the given encoding (utf-8, unicode...)
-H or --html - input is HTML
-h or --help - print help
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Format XML document disabling indent
cat xml/tab-obj.xml | xmlstarlet fo --noindent
</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<table>
<rec id="1">
<numField>123</numField>
<stringField>String Value</stringField>
<object name="Obj1">
<property name="size">10</property>
<property name="type">Data</property>
</object>
</rec>
<rec id="2">
<numField>346</numField>
<stringField>Text Value</stringField>
</rec>
<rec id="3">
<numField>-23</numField>
<stringField>stringValue</stringField>
</rec>
</table>
</xml>
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Recover malformed XML document
xmlstarlet fo -R xml/malformed.xml 2>/dev/null
</pre><p>Input:</p><pre class="programlisting"><test_output>
<test_name>foo</testname>
<subtest>...</subtest>
</test_output>
</pre><p>Output:</p><pre class="programlisting"><test_output>
<test_name>foo</test_name>
<subtest>...</subtest>
</test_output>
</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm334"></a>6. Canonicalization of XML documents</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is synopsis for 'xmlstarlet c14n' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">XMLStarlet Toolkit: XML canonicalization
Usage: xmlstarlet c14n <mode> <xml-file> [<xpath-file>] [<inclusive-ns-list>]
where
<xml-file> - input XML document file name (stdin is used if '-')
<xpath-file> - XML file containing XPath expression for
c14n XML canonicalization
Example:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<XPath xmlns:n0="http://a.example.com" xmlns:n1="http://b.example">
(//. | //@* | //namespace::*)[ancestor-or-self::n1:elem1]
</XPath>
<inclusive-ns-list> - the list of inclusive namespace prefixes
(only for exclusive canonicalization)
Example: 'n1 n2'
<mode> is one of following:
--with-comments XML file canonicalization w comments (default)
--without-comments XML file canonicalization w/o comments
--exc-with-comments Exclusive XML file canonicalization w comments
--exc-without-comments Exclusive XML file canonicalization w/o comments
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># XML canonicalization
xmlstarlet c14n --with-comments ../examples/xml/structure.xml ; echo $?
</pre><p>Input ../examples/xml/structure.xml</p><pre class="programlisting"><a1>
<a11>
<a111>
<a1111/>
</a111>
<a112>
<a1121/>
</a112>
</a11>
<a12/>
<a13>
<a131/>
</a13>
</a1></pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting"><a1>
<a11>
<a111>
<a1111></a1111>
</a111>
<a112>
<a1121></a1121>
</a112>
</a11>
<a12></a12>
<a13>
<a131></a131>
</a13>
</a1>
0
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># XML exclusive canonicalization
xmlstarlet c14n --exc-with-comments ../examples/xml/c14n.xml ../examples/xml/c14n.xpath
</pre><p>Input</p><pre class="programlisting">../examples/xml/c14n.xml
<n0:pdu xmlns:n0='http://a.example.com'>
<n1:elem1 xmlns:n1='http://b.example'>
content
</n1:elem1>
</n0:pdu>
../examples/xml/c14n.xpath
<XPath xmlns:n0="http://a.example.com" xmlns:n1="http://b.example">
(//. | //@* | //namespace::*)[ancestor-or-self::n1:elem1]
</XPath>
</pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting"><n1:elem1 xmlns:n1="http://b.example">
content
</n1:elem1>
</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm350"></a>7. XML and PYX format</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is synopsis for 'xmlstarlet pyx' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">XMLStarlet Toolkit: Convert XML into PYX format (based on ESIS - ISO 8879)
Usage: xmlstarlet pyx {<xml-file>}
where
<xml-file> - input XML document file name (stdin is used if missing)
The PYX format is a line-oriented representation of
XML documents that is derived from the SGML ESIS format.
(see ESIS - ISO 8879 Element Structure Information Set spec,
ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 N931 (ESIS))
A non-validating, ESIS generating tool originally developed for
pyxie project (see http://pyxie.sourceforge.net/)
ESIS Generation by Sean Mc Grath http://www.digitome.com/sean.html
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet pyx input.xml
</pre><p>Input (input.xml)</p><pre class="programlisting"><books>
<book type='hardback'>
<title>Atlas Shrugged</title>
<author>Ayn Rand</author>
<isbn id='1'>0525934189</isbn>
</book>
</books></pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting">(books
-\n
(book
Atype hardback
-\n
(title
-Atlas Shrugged
)title
-\n
(author
-Ayn Rand
)author
-\n
(isbn
Aid 1
-0525934189
)isbn
-\n
)book
-\n
)books</pre><p>PYX is a line oriented format for XML files which can be helpful
(and very efficient) when used in combination with regular line oriented
UNIX command such as sed, grep, awk.</p><p>'depyx' option is used for conversion back from PYX into
XML.</p><p>EXAMPLE (Delete all attributes). This should work really fast for
very large XML documents.</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet pyx input.xml | grep -v "^A" | xmlstarlet depyx</pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting"><books>
<book>
<title>Atlas Shrugged</title>
<author>Ayn Rand</author>
<isbn>0525934189</isbn>
</book>
</books></pre><p>Here is an article which describes how PYX format can be used to
grep XML. <a class="link" href="http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-matters17.html" target="_top">http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-matters17.html</a></p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm368"></a>8. Escape/Unescape special XML characters</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is synopsis for 'xmlstarlet esc' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet esc --help
XMLStarlet Toolkit: Escape special XML characters
Usage: xmlstarlet esc [<options>] [<string>]
where <options> are
--help - print usage
(TODO: more to be added in future)
if <string> is missing stdin is used instead.
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting"># Escape special XML characters
cat xml/structure.xml | xmlstarlet esc
</pre><p>Input</p><pre class="programlisting"><a1>
<a11>
<a111>
<a1111/>
</a111>
<a112>
<a1121/>
</a112>
</a11>
<a12/>
<a13>
<a131/>
</a13>
</a1></pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting">&lt;a1&gt;
&lt;a11&gt;
&lt;a111&gt;
&lt;a1111/&gt;
&lt;/a111&gt;
&lt;a112&gt;
&lt;a1121/&gt;
&lt;/a112&gt;
&lt;/a11&gt;
&lt;a12/&gt;
&lt;a13&gt;
&lt;a131/&gt;
&lt;/a13&gt;
&lt;/a1&gt;
</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm378"></a>9. List directory as XML</h2></div></div></div><p>Here is synopsis for 'xmlstarlet ls' command:</p><pre class="programlisting">XMLStarlet Toolkit: List directory as XML
Usage: xmlstarlet ls
Lists current directory in XML format.
XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform
XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/)
</pre><p>EXAMPLE</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet ls
</pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting"><xml>
<d p="rwxrwxrwx" a="20050107T050740Z" m="20050107T050740Z" s="0" n="old-resume"/>
<f p="rw-rw-rw-" a="20050107T045941Z" m="20050107T045941Z" s="12" n="resume.2old"/>
<f p="rw-rw-rw-" a="20050107T045924Z" m="20050107T045924Z" s="81" n="resume.xml"/>
</xml>
</pre></div></div><div class="chapter"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a name="idm386"></a>Chapter 5. Common problems</h1></div></div></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm388"></a>1. Namespaces and default namespace</h2></div></div></div><div class="sect2"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="idm390"></a>1.1. The Problem: Why does nothing match?</h3></div></div></div><p>You try to extract the links from an XHTML document like
this:
</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -t -m "//a" -c . -n page.xhtml</pre><p>
The document contains an <code class="code"><a/></code> element, but
there are no matches.
</p><pre class="programlisting"><html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><body>
<a href="http://example.com">A link</a>
</body></html></pre><p>
</p><p>
The problem is the
<code class="code">xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"</code> attribute
on the root element, meaning that it, and all elements below
have this url as part of their name.
</p></div><div class="sect2"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="idm398"></a>1.2. The Solution</h3></div></div></div><p>
To match namespaced elements you must bind the namespace to
a prefix and prepend it to the name:
</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -N x="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" -t -m "//x:a" -c . -n page.xhtml</pre><p>
</p></div><div class="sect2"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="idm402"></a>1.3. A More Convenient Solution</h3></div></div></div><p>
XML documents can also use different namespace prefixes, on
any element in the document. In order to handle namespaces
with greater ease, XMLStarlet (versions 1.2.1+) will use the
namespace prefixes declared on the root element of the input
document. The default namespace will be bound to the
prefixes "_" and "DEFAULT" (in versions 1.5.0+). So another
way to solve handle the previous example would be:
</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -t -m "//_:a" -c . -n page.xhtml</pre><p>
</p><p>
This feature can be disabled (versions 1.6.0+) by the global
<code class="code">--no-doc-namespace</code> option. When should you
disable it? Suppose you are writing a script that handles
XML documents that look like this:
</p><pre class="programlisting"><data xmlns:a="http://example.com">
<a:important-data>...</a:important-data>
</data>
</pre><p>
and also this:
</p><pre class="programlisting"><data xmlns:b="http://example.com">
<b:important-data>...</b:important-data>
</data>
</pre><p>
Since both documents use the same namespace they are
equivalent, even though the prefixes happen to be different.
By using <code class="code">--no-doc-namespace</code> and binding the
namespace with -N, you can be sure that XMLStarlet's
behaviour will be independant of the input document.
</p></div><div class="sect2"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"><a name="idm411"></a>1.4. Deleting namespace declarations </h3></div></div></div><p>Delete namespace declarations and all elements from non default
namespace from the following XML document:</p><p>Input (file ns2.xml)</p><pre class="programlisting"><doc xmlns="http://www.a.com/xyz" xmlns:ns="http://www.c.com/xyz">
<A>test</A>
<B>
<ns:C>xyz</ns:C>
</B>
</doc>
</pre><p>Command:</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet ed -N N="http://www.c.com/xyz" -d '//N:*' ns2.xml | \
sed -e 's/ xmlns.*=".*"//g'</pre><p>Output</p><pre class="programlisting"><doc>
<A>test</A>
<B/>
</doc>
</pre></div></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm420"></a>2. Special characters</h2></div></div></div><p>Sometimes issues appear with handling of special characters, where
'special' means in XML sence as well as in 'shell' terms. Examples below
should clear at least some of the confusions.</p><p>You should not forget about the fact that your command lines are
executed by shell and shell does substitutions of its special characters
too. So for example, one may ask:</p><p>"Why does the following query return nothing?"
</p><pre class="programlisting">echo '<X name="foo">EEE</X>' | xmlstarlet sel -t -m /X[@name='foo'] -v .</pre><p>The answer lies in the way shell substitues 'foo', which simply
becomes foo before the command is run. So the correct way to write that
would be</p><pre class="programlisting">echo '<X name="foo">EEE</X>' | xmlstarlet sel -t -m "/X[@name='foo']" -v .</pre><p>Another example involves XML special characters. Question: How to
search for &apos; in text nodes?</p><p>The following should help</p><pre class="programlisting">xmlstarlet sel -t -m "//line[contains(text(),&quot;'&quot;)]" -c .
</pre></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm432"></a>3. Sorting</h2></div></div></div><p>Let's take a look at XSLT produced by the following 'xmlstarlet sel'
command:</p><pre class="programlisting"># Query XML document and produce sorted text table
xmlstarlet sel -T -t -m /xml/table/rec -s D:N:- "@id" \
-v "concat(@id,'|',numField,'|',stringField)" -n xml/table.xml
</pre><pre class="programlisting"><xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no" method="text"/>
<xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param>
<xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:call-template name="t1"/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template name="t1">
<xsl:for-each select="/xml/table/rec">
<xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number"
case-order="upper-first" select="@id"/>
<xsl:value-of select="concat(@id,'|',numField,'|',stringField)"/>
<xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/>
</xsl:for-each>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
</pre><p>-s option of 'xmlstarlet sel' command controls 'order', 'data-type', and
'case-order' attributes of <xsl:sort/> element .</p></div><div class="sect1"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a name="idm440"></a>4. Validation</h2></div></div></div><p>Many questions are asked about XSD (XML schema) validation. Well,
XmlStarlet relies on libxml2 which has incomplete support for XML
schemas. Untill it is done in libxml2 it will not be in
XmlStarlet.</p><p></p><p></p></div></div><div class="chapter"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h1 class="title"><a name="idm445"></a>Chapter 6. Other XmlStarlet Resources</h1></div></div></div><p>Here are few articles on the Internet.</p><div class="itemizedlist"><ul class="itemizedlist" style="list-style-type: disc; "><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/free_issues/issue_06/xml_starlet/" target="_top">XMLStarlet:
a Unix toolkit for XML</a></p></li><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-starlet.html" target="_top">Start
working with XMLStarlet</a></p></li><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://blogicblog.blogspot.com/2004/09/xmlstarlet-gentle-introduction-into.html" target="_top">XMLStarlet:
A gentle introduction into XSLT </a></p></li><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://blogs.applibase.net/pramod/index.php/archives/command-line-xml-with-xmlstarlet%20" target="_top">Command
line XML with XMLStarlet </a></p></li><li class="listitem"><p><a class="link" href="http://www.pinkjuice.com/howto/vimxml/moresetup.xml#xmlstarlet" target="_top">Using
vi as XML editor</a></p></li></ul></div></div></div></body></html>
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