How can I get the value from an attribute using xmllint and XPath?
You need to use fn:string(), which will return the value of its argument as xs:string. In case its argument is an attribute, it will therefore return the attribute's value as xs:string.
test=$(xmllint --xpath "string(//body/value/@name)" test.xml)
An approach with a helper awk command that supports multiple attributes (a streamlined version of ego's approach):
echo 'cat //*/@name' | xmllint --shell file | awk -F\" 'NR % 2 == 0 { print $2 }'The awk command:
splits
xmllint's output lines into fields by"chars. (-F\")- Note that
xmllintnormalizes quoting around attribute values to"..."on output, even if the input had'...', so it's sufficient to split by".
- Note that
only processes even-numbered lines (
NR %2 == 0), thereby filtering out the separator lines thatcatinvariably prints.print $2then prints only the 2nd field, which is the value of each attribute without the enclosing"...".
Assuming the following sample XML in file:
<body> <value name="abc"></value> <value name="def"></value></body>the above yields:
abcdef