Re: [xslt] Extracting just the value of a property

[Syd Bauman <Syd_Bauman Brown edu>]

DS> <project name="FullDist" default="full">
DS>    <property name="projectname" value="Bleeding_Edge"/>
DS>    <!-- Lots of other stuff here -->
DS> </project>
DS> And you want to pull out just Bleeding_Edge without a lot of xml
DS> framing. From a shell script, ...

Where size, speed, and lots of repetitions are not a concern, I might
use the xmlstarlet package:

---------
#!/bin/bash
prop_value=$(xml sel -t                                       \
                 -m "//project/property[ name='projectname']" \
                 -v '@value' /tmp/t.xml)
echo "I have '${prop_value}'."
---------


LQ> this XML design assumes that neither names nor properties ever
LQ> contain markup themselves, and are always in the same language.

DS> Sorry, which XML design?

I believe Liam meant the design of your data, i.e. the first 4 lines
of the body of this e-mail. He was pointing out the disadvantages of
putting data into attributes of empty elements, rather than using
child elements. Re-read his example, it's a good one. (Except that 
<sup> only indicates a superscript, not that the speed of light is
squared. :-)


LQ> I wrote a simple C program that takes an XML document and an
LQ> XPath expression, and returns the result. You're welcome to a
LQ> copy.

I'd love to see this, too, Liam.


DV> [... xmlTextReader ...]

Wow!