Tip: Parse XML Values in bash e.g. Magento local.xml

Aug 23, 2012 · 1 minute read
Category: bash

Not the most elegant way to do this, and probably could do with some extra tweaks but it works for our purposes, so presented here in case it fits yours :

# xml_value path/to/file node_key
function xml_value(){
    grep "<$2>.*<.$2>" $1 | sed -e "s/<\!\[CDATA\[//" | sed -e "s/\]\]>//" | sed -e "s/^.*<$2/<$2/" | cut -f2 -d">"| cut -f1 -d"<"
}

It also strips out the CDATA tags, which we needed to pull the database details from Magento’s local.xml

To use this to get, for example, the database host, you would use the following:

DB_HOST=$(xml_value app/etc/local.xml host)

To use this