ansible-xml

Ansible module for manipulating bits and pieces of XML files and strings.

Installation

• This module requires Python bindings to libxml version 2.3 or later. This is usually in a package called python-lxml. Install with apt-get install python-lxml, yum install python-lxml, or pip install lxml.
• This module is NOT included with Ansible. Install with git clone https://github.com/cmprescott/ansible-xml.git, or ansible-galaxy install cmprescott.xml. Valid installation paths are the playbook's library directory, the playbook's roles directory and include in the playbook, or Ansible's modules path.

Notes

• Original module created by @github_rhinception.
• On 2015-05-05, @tbielawa transferred the project over to @cmprescott to resolve issue #16.
• This software is available under the terms of the GPLv2 license.
• Hi there, we have unit tests!

What is XPath?

"XPath uses path expressions to select nodes or node-sets in an XML document. The node is selected by following a path or steps."

Basically, it's a syntax which allows you to select a specific, or collection, of elements or attributes in an XML file.

Learn more at the Mozilla Developer Network

Unittests

Also included in this repository are Unittests. Reference these, in addition to the Travis-CI configuration, if you need some more examples.

Examples

Given:

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<business type="bar">
    <name>Tasty Beverage Co.</name>
    <beers>
        <beer>Rochefort 10</beer>
        <beer>St. Bernardus Abbot 12</beer>
        <beer>Schlitz</beer>
    </beers>
    <rating subjective="true">10</rating>
    <website>
        <mobilefriendly />
        <address>http://tastybeverageco.com</address>
    </website>
</business>

Remove the subjective attribute of the rating element:

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/business/rating/@subjective ensure=absent

Set the rating to 11

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/business/rating value=11

Get count of beers nodes

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/business/beers/beer count=true
  register: hits

debug: var=hits.count

Add a phonenumber element to the business element Implicit mkdir -p behavior where applicable (parent xml nodes created automatically)

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/business/phonenumber value=555-555-1234

Add several more beers to the beers element, assuming a vars.yaml file with:

new_beers:
    - beer: "Old Rasputin"
    - beer: "Old Motor Oil"
    - beer: "Old Curmudgeon"

Then the playbook syntax would look like this:

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/business/beers add_children={{ new_beers }}

The same, but do it inline

xml:
  file: /foo/bar.xml
  xpath: /business/beers
  add_children:
      - beer: "Old Rasputin"
      - beer: "Old Motor Oil"
      - beer: "Old Curmudgeon"

Add a validxhtml element to the website element. Note that ensure is present by default, and value defaults to null for elements. The result is something like <website><validxhtml />...</website>

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/business/website/validxhtml

Add an empty validatedon attribute to the validxhtml element. This actually makes the last example redundant because of the implicit parent-node creation behavior. The result is something like <website><validxhtml validatedon='' />...</website>

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/business/website/validxhtml/@validatedon

(1/2) Remove all children from the website element:

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/business/website/* ensure=absent

(2/2) Remove all children from the website element:

xml:
  file: /foo/bar.xml
  xpath: /business/website
  children: []

Question? If You have <beers><child01 /><child02 /></beers>

What happens if you say:

xml: file=/foo/bar.xml xpath=/beers

value defaults to an element, so then this would erase the children elements.