Create or update a section in XML file with Augeas

Question

I would like to update a section in an XML config file or add a new one if does not exist already using Augeas.

The XML file looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<security>
          <users>
            ...
            <user>
              <id>deployment</id>
              <firstName>Deployment</firstName>
              <lastName>User</lastName>
              <password>somepasshere</password>
              <status>active</status>
              <email>[email protected]</email>
            </user>
          </users>
</security>

I would like to update the last name/first name/email if the ID exists already or add a new user section if it's a new ID.

In AugTool I use:

augtool> set /augeas/load/Xml/lens Xml.lns
augtool> set /augeas/load/Xml/incl /security.xml
augtool> load

I'm still learning Augeas, so this was my first try to get the node :

augtool> print /files/security.xml/security/users/user/*[ #text= 'deployment']

What would be the command to update or create a new section user in users ?

thank you!

Answer 1

First, with recent Augeas versions (>= 1.0.0), you can use --transform to set up the transformation. Let's say the file is ./users.xml:

$ augtool -r . --noautoload --transform "Xml.lns incl /users.xml"
augtool> defnode user /files/users.xml/security/users/user[id/#text="deployment"] # Create a new user entry if it doesn't exist yet, assign node to the "user" variable
augtool> set $user/id/#text "deployment"         # Set id if node was just created
augtool> set $user/firstName/#text "Deployment"  # Set firstName
augtool> set $user/lastName/#text "User"         # Set lastName
augtool> set $user/email/#text "[email protected]"  # set email
...
augtool> save
Saved 1 file(s)

You can even turn this into a script, say user.augtool:

#!/usr/bin/augtool -sf
defnode user /files/users.xml/security/users/user[id/#text="deployment"]
set $user/id/#text "deployment"
set $user/firstName/#text "Deployment"
set $user/lastName/#text "User"
set $user/email/#text "[email protected]"

which you can then launch:

$ chmod +x user.augtool
$ ./user.augtool --transform "Xml.lns incl /users.xml" -r .
Saved 1 file(s)