Files

SKILL.mdagentsreferencesscripts

Install

Install the containing plugin

/plugin install shared-skills@llm-skills

Invoke this skill after installation

/shared-skills:xml2

Download xml2-skill.zip

This skill is bundled inside shared-skills. Install the plugin once, then Claude Code can use any of its included skills. Browse the full plugin repository at github.com/alisonaquinas/llm-shared-skills.

SKILL.md

name: xml2 description: > Convert XML documents to flat line-oriented format for Unix pipeline processing, and reconstruct XML from flat format using 2xml. Use when the task involves extracting fields from XML with grep, sed, or awk; editing XML values in-place via pipeline; transforming or filtering XML without an XML-aware tool; or performing round-trip XML modification using shell text tools. Also useful when flattening RSS/Atom feeds, config files, or data exports to extract specific paths.

xml2 / 2xml

Convert XML to a flat, line-oriented format for shell pipeline processing, and reconstruct XML with 2xml.

Prerequisite Check

Run this before proposing flat XML workflows:

command -v xml2 >/dev/null 2>&1 && command -v 2xml >/dev/null 2>&1

If xml2 or 2xml is missing, surface that first and either run scripts/install.sh or scripts/install.ps1, or fall back to xmllint or xq when the task can stay XML-aware instead of line-oriented.

Intent Router

Request	Reference	Load When
Install xml2/2xml	`references/install-and-setup.md`	Setting up on a new system
Flat format syntax, flags, one-liners	`references/cheatsheet.md`	Need quick command lookup
Pipeline patterns, round-trip recipes	`references/examples-and-recipes.md`	Building multi-step workflows

Quick Start

# Flatten XML to inspect structure
xml2 < file.xml

# Extract all values at a path
xml2 < file.xml | grep '/root/item/title='

# Edit a value and reconstruct
xml2 < file.xml | sed 's|/config/host=.*|/config/host=newhost|' | 2xml > modified.xml

# Round-trip (should produce equivalent XML)
xml2 < file.xml | 2xml

# Verify a round-trip with XML-aware tooling
xml2 < file.xml | 2xml | xmllint --format -

# Fallback when xml2 is unavailable
xmllint --xpath '//item/title/text()' file.xml

Flat Format

xml2 converts XML into one line per node, using path=value notation:

/rss/channel/title=My Blog
/rss/channel/item/title=First Post
/rss/channel/item/@id=42
/rss/channel/item/body=Hello world

Element text becomes /path/to/element=value
Attributes become /path/to/element/@attr=value
Repeated elements produce multiple lines with the same path
2xml reverses the transformation line-by-line

Core Workflow

Flatten: xml2 < input.xml — inspect paths and values
Filter or edit: pipe through grep, sed, awk
Reconstruct: pipe result into 2xml > output.xml
Verify: compare structure with xmllint --format output.xml

Safety Notes

Area	Guardrail
Fidelity	Round-trip may not preserve XML declaration, whitespace, or namespace prefixes exactly.
Mixed content	Elements with both text and child elements may lose structure. Test round-trip before relying on output.
Large files	`xml2` loads the full document into memory. Use streaming tools (e.g., `xq --xml-item-depth`) for very large files.
Encoding	Input should be UTF-8. Non-UTF-8 files may produce garbled output.

Recovery note: when xml2 is unavailable, keep the fallback boundary explicit. xmllint and xq can query XML, but they do not preserve the same flat line-oriented editing model.

Resource Index

scripts/install.sh — Install on macOS or Linux
scripts/install.ps1 — Install notes for Windows (WSL required)