Csdrhrt

Using python

$ python -c 'from xml.etree.ElementTree import ElementTree; print ElementTree(file="pom.xml").findtext("{http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0}version")'

1.0.74-SNAPSHOT

Using xmlstarlet

$ xml sel -N x="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" -t -m 'x:project/x:version' -v . pom.xml

1.0.74-SNAPSHOT

Using xmllint

$ echo -e 'setns x=http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0ncat /x:project/x:version/text()' | xmllint --shell pom.xml | grep -v /

1.0.74-SNAPSHOT

Other way: xmlgrep and XPath:

xmlgrep --text_only '/project/version' pom.xml

Disadvantage: slow

Clojure way. Requires only jvm with special jar file:

java -cp clojure.jar clojure.main -e "(use 'clojure.xml) (->> (java.io.File. "pom.xml") (clojure.xml/parse) (:content) (filter #(= (:tag %) :version)) (first) (:content) (first) (println))"

Scala way:

java -Xbootclasspath/a:scala-library.jar -cp scala-compiler.jar scala.tools.nsc.MainGenericRunner -e 'import scala.xml._; println((XML.load(new java.io.FileInputStream("pom.xml")) match { case <project>{children @ _*}</project> => for (i <- children if (i  match { case <version>{children @ _*}</version> => true; case _ => false;  }))  yield i })(0) match { case <version>{Text(x)}</version> => x })'

Groovy way:

java -classpath groovy-all.jar groovy.ui.GroovyMain -e 'println (new XmlParser().parse(new File("pom.xml")).value().findAll({ it.name().getLocalPart()=="version" }).first().value().first())'

Here's an alternative in Perl

$ perl -MXML::Simple -e'print XMLin("pom.xml")->{version}."n"'

1.0.74-SNAPSHOT

It works with the revised/extended example in the questions which has multiple "version" elements at different depths.

Hacky way:

perl -e '$_ = join "", <>; m!<project[^>]*>.*n(?:    |t)<version[^>]*>s*([^<]+?)s*</version>.*</project>!s and print "$1n"' pom.xml

Relies on correct indentation of the required <version>

Work out a very clumsy, one-liner solution

python -c "from xml.dom.minidom import parse;dom = parse('pom.xml');print [n for n in dom.getElementsByTagName('version') if n.parentNode == dom.childNodes[0]][0].toxml()" | sed -e "s/.*>(.*)<.*/1/g"

The sed at the end is very ugly but i was not able to print out the text of the node with mindom alone.

Update from _Vi:

Less hacky Python version:

python -c "from xml.dom.minidom import parse;dom = parse('pom.xml');print [i.childNodes.item(0).nodeValue for i in dom.firstChild.childNodes if i.nodeName == 'version'].pop()"

Update from me

Another version:

    python -c "from  xml.dom.minidom import parse;dom = parse('pom.xml');print [n.firstChild.data for n in dom.childNodes[0].childNodes if n.firstChild and n.tagName == 'version']"

XSLT way:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

        <xsl:output method="text"/>



        <xsl:template match="/">

                <xsl:for-each select="*[local-name()='project']">

                    <xsl:for-each select="*[local-name()='version']">

                        <xsl:value-of select="text()"/>

                    </xsl:for-each>

                </xsl:for-each>

        </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

xalan -xsl x.xsl -in pom.xml

if "There are a lot of version tag in the xml" then you better forget about doing it with "simple tools" and regexps, that won't do.

try this python (no dependencies):

from xml.dom.minidom import parse



dom = parse('pom.xml')

project = dom.getElementsByTagName('project')[0]

for node in project.childNodes:

    if node.nodeType == node.ELEMENT_NODE and node.tagName == 'version':

        print node.firstChild.nodeValue

Here is a one-liner using sed:

sed '/<dependencies>/,/</dependencies>/d;/<version>/!d;s/ *</?version> *//g' pom.xml

Return_text_val=$(xmllint --xpath "//*[local-name()='$TagElmnt']" $FILE )

Here, try this:

$TagElmnt - TagName

$FILE - xml file to parse

sed -n "/<name>project-parent/{n;s/.*>(.*)<.*/1/p;q}" pom.xml

The -n option avoids printing non-matching lines; first match (/.../) is on the line before the one with wanted text; the n command skips to next line, where s extracts relevant info thru a capturing group ((...)), and a backreference (1). p prints out, q quits.

awk works fine without using any extra tools.
cat pod.xml

<project>

  <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>

  <groupId>com.networks.app</groupId>

  <artifactId>operation-platform</artifactId>

  <version>1.0.0</version>

  <packaging>tar.xz</packaging>

  <description>POM was created by Sonatype Nexus</description>

</project>

simple and legible way to get the value of <packaging> tag:

cat pod.xml | awk -F'[<>]' '/packaging/{print $3}'

I know your question says Linux but if you have the need to do this on Windows without the need of any 3rd party tools such that you can put it in a batch file, Powershell can extract any node from the your pom.xml file like so:

powershell -Command "& {select-xml //pom:project/pom:properties/pom:mypluginversion -path pom.xml -Namespace  @{pom='http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0'} | foreach {$_.Node.Innerxml}}" > myPluginVersion.txt