xml2 | Alison's LLM Skills Marketplace | Alison's LLM Skills Marketplace

Files

SKILL.mdagentsreferencesscripts

Install

Install only this skill with npx skills

npx skills add alisonaquinas/llm-shared-skills --skill 'xml2' -g -y

Install the containing skill bundle

/plugin install shared-skills@llm-skills

Download xml2-skill.zip

This skill is bundled inside shared-skills. Use npx skills when you only want this skill, or install the bundle once to make every included skill available through the plugin marketplace flow. Browse the full skill bundle repository at github.com/alisonaquinas/llm-shared-skills.

Invoke

Invoke this skill after installation

/shared-skills:xml2

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)