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xmlbashxpathxml-parsingxmlstarlet

Returning content of XML element

I'm trying to use xmlstarlet to extract the text in certain elements in this XML feed:

https://services.boatwizard.com/bridge/events/bc0af0c8-4b47-42b3-9a71-5326775344e0/boats?status=on

One of the elements I'd like to extract is the text for city name which is embedded in the XML document as (excluding certain parent elements for clarity):

<Location>
<LocationAddress>
<CityName>St Malo</CityName>
<CountryID>FR</CountryID>
<Postcode>35400</Postcode>
</LocationAddress>
</Location>

I'm trying to extract "St Malo".

I've saved the feed to boats.xml and I've used xmlstarlet el -v boats.xml to figure out the correct XPath name, which seems to be:

ProcessVehicleRemarketingDataArea/VehicleRemarketing/VehicleRemarketingBoatLineItem/Location/LocationAddress/CityName

I am trying the following syntax to extract the text:

xml sel -t -m "ProcessVehicleRemarketingDataArea/VehicleRemarketing/VehicleRemarketingBoatLineItem/Location/LocationAddress/CityName" -v "." -n boats.xml

Have tried many different syntax variations with no success. Almost think it might be the XML file that's off? How I extract "St Malo"?

Solution

  • The XML in the link you supplied declares a default namespace in the VehicleRemarking tag:

     <VehicleRemarketing xmlns="http://www.starstandard.org/STAR/5" ...>

    That means you have to declare it with a prefix which you should use to qualify each step of your XPath expression that is part of that namespace:

    xml sel -N ns=http://www.starstandard.org/STAR/5 
        -t -m "ProcessVehicleRemarketingDataArea/ns:VehicleRemarketing//ns:CityName" 
        -v "." -n boats.xml

    The first element is not part of the namespace, but ns:VehicleRemarketing and all its children are. You can also use just //ns:CityName for the expression, in this case (considering the example you posted - it will return all CityName elements in the file).