Shell script to replace a variable in a HTML document

Question

I want to generate a static website from a shell script.

A example for the shell script code is:

author="Github INC."
name="Github"
description="social coding"
text=$(awk '{ print }' main.html)

The main.html could look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<head> 
    <title>$name</title> 
</head> 
<body>
......

I want to replace the $name string in the html document between the title tag with the $name string in the bash script (in this example Github) so in this example it should look like this:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<head> 
    <title>Github</title> 
</head> 
<body>
......

I could do this by changing the shell script Code to this:

author="Github INC."
name="Github"
description="social coding"
text="$( sed "s/<title>.*<\/title>/<title>$name<\/title>" main.html )"

But if I use more then one string in the html document, then it won't work anymore...

For example:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<head> 
    <title>$name</title> 
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> 
    <meta name="robots" content="index, follow" /> 
    <meta name="author" content="$author" /> 
    <meta name="description" content="$description" /> 
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.png" /> 
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> 
</head> 
<body>

Any ideas how to connect the strings from the Shell Script with the HTML Document?

not sure what @RobW means. sed 's/1/2/g;s/a/b/g;s/txt/newTxt/g' allows you to change as many lines as you want. Typically for more than a couple of sed cmds (more than my example above), people put all of the sed actions into a seperate file, 1 cmd per line, and then execute like sed -f mySedFixer.sed myTest.html.template > myTest.html Or if your workin in Linux, see if you sed supports the -i option, which saves modifications to the named file(s) without need to redirect into a temporary file, and rename. Good luck. — shellter
– shellter, Commented Dec 9, 2011 at 21:55
@shellter By "works on a single line only", I was referring to the fact that sed processes input line by line. — Rob W
– Rob W, Commented Dec 9, 2011 at 22:01

jaypal singh · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-09 23:56:41Z

5

Using awk

[jaypal:~/Temp] cat html.sh 
#!/bin/bash
author="Github INC."
name="Github"
description="social coding"
awk '{sub(/\$name/,name);sub(/\$author/,author);sub(/\$description/,description);}1' name="$name" author="$author" description="$description" inputfile

Using sed

[jaypal:~/Temp] cat html1.sh 
#!/bin/bash
author="Github INC."
name="Github"
description="social coding"
sed -e '/\$name/s//"$name"/' -e '/\$description/s//"$description"/' -e '/\$author/s//"$author"/' inputfile

answered Dec 9, 2011 at 23:56

jaypal singh

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Kent · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-09 22:03:28Z

see the test (with awk) below: actually sed should work as well.

kent$  cat main.html 
<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<head> 
    <title>$name</title> 
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> 
    <meta name="robots" content="index, follow" /> 
    <meta name="author" content="$author" /> 
    <meta name="description" content="$description" /> 
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.png" /> 
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> 
</head> 
<body>


kent$  cat doIt.sh 
#!/bin/bash
author="Github INC."
name="Github"
description="social coding"
awk -vauthor="$author" -vname="$name" -vdesc="$description" '{gsub(/\$name/,name);gsub(/\$author/,author);gsub(/\$description/,desc)}1' main.html

kent$  ./doIt.sh  
<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<head> 
    <title>Github</title> 
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> 
    <meta name="robots" content="index, follow" /> 
    <meta name="author" content="Github INC." /> 
    <meta name="description" content="social coding" /> 
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.png" /> 
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> 
</head> 
<body>

kev · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-23 12:27:04Z

1

vim:

:%s/\v"\zs\$\w+\ze"/\={'$author':'Github INC.', '$name':'Github', '$description':'social coding'}[submatch(0)]/g

answered Dec 23, 2011 at 12:27

kev

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Comments

zstegi · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-03 17:47:41Z

I created shtpl for that purpose. (A very young project of mine, but may you want to give it a try, because i think it solves exactly your needs)

To replace in your last example all placeholders, you can simply execute:

$ name=testname author=testauthor description=mydescription sh -c "$( shtpl example.html.tpl )"

The result would be:

<!DOCTYPE html> 
<html> 
<head> 
    <title>testname</title> 
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> 
    <meta name="robots" content="index, follow" /> 
    <meta name="author" content="testauthor" /> 
    <meta name="description" content="mydescription" /> 
    <link rel="shortcut icon" href="favicon.png" /> 
    <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css" /> 
</head> 
<body>

It's that easy.

Rob W · Accepted Answer · 2011-12-09 21:53:45Z

-1

The following snippet can be used to replace $name with Github:

# Example: Replace $name in main.html with Github, output in replaced.html
title=Github
awk '{ gsub("\$name","'$title'")}; print $0 }' main.html > replaced.html

The replaced file is output at replaced.html. If you want to overwrite the existing file, use:

awk '{ gsub("\$name","'$title'")}; print $0 }' main.html > replaced.html &&
     mv replaced.html test.html

answered Dec 9, 2011 at 21:53

Rob W

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