[collectd] curl_xml plugin

[Amit Gupta]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 11:59 PM, Florian Forster <octo at verplant.org> wrote:

> Hi Amit,
>
> On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 02:11:01PM +0530, Amit Gupta wrote:
>

> > > > I have been working on curl_xml plugin. The idea of this plugin is
> > > > to query the xml data using the curl library and parse it
> > > > according to the user's configuration using libxml2. I have worked
> > > > on the top of curl-json plugin code and got this plugin to work.
>
> Sounds interesting :) What do you plan to use this plugin for?
>

Sun Java System Web Server 7.0.  This  server exposes monitoring data in xml
format via a URL and thus, the need of this plugin.

>
> > > > I am proposing the following configuration for curl_xml:
> > > >
> > > > <Plugin curl_xml>
> > > >    <URL "[some url]">
> > > >        Instance "<instance-name>"
> > > >        <xpath "<xpath1>">
> > > >           Instance "<instance-name>" (Optional)
> > > >           Type "<type>"
> > > >        </xpath>
> > > >        <xpath "<xpath2>">
> > > >           Instance "<instance-name>" (Optional)
> > > >           Type "<type>"
> > > >        </xpath>
> > > >   </URL>
> > > >   <URL .....>
> > > >      ......
> > > >    </URL>
> > > > </Plugin>
>
> Looks okay to me. However, I'd expect XML to contain a lot of tabular
> data in general. Wouldn't it make sense to make it possible to configure
> columns for instance name and values. Something like:
>
>  <XPath "/path/to/table[class=magic]">     # I don't know the XPath
>    Instance "tr/th[class=type_of_magic]"   # syntax, so I'm making
>    Values "tr/td[class=magic_level]"       # something up here.
>    Type "magic_level"
>    Table true
>  </XPath>
>

Looks good to me. I will try to implement this configuration and re-post the
updated plugin.


> Where:
>
>  * The argumetn to "XPath" is an xpath which returns a base block in
>    which to look further.
>  * The arguments to "Instance" and "Values" are xpath expressions, too.
>

Just a clarification, "Instance" here will be type_instance(s) and thus can
be anything (not just xpath), right?

Regards
Amit

Regards,
> -octo
>
> [0] <http://collectd.org/wiki/index.php/Roadmap#cURL-XML_plugin>
> --
> Florian octo Forster
> Hacker in training
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> http://verplant.org/
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