how can a BPEL variable be put into a shell variable - shell

Question

a BPEL process creates a xml document, a certain XSD file that has xml structure and i want to parse that BPEL variable with xmllint or xmlstarlet with a unix shell commandline command. is that possible at all?
how can i put the BPEL variable into a shell variable , in order to be able to parse it with xmllint for instance?
INPUT:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ns:ItemList xmlns:ns="http:///blabla">
<GenericItem>
<ns2:LocalItem xmlns:ns2="http:///blabla">
<ItemSource> </ItemSource>
<ConcItemSource>
<name></name>
<requirements/>
<strategy/>
</ConcItemSource>
<dataFormat/>
<directory></directory>
<file/>
</ns2:LocalItem>
</GenericItem>
<GenericItem>
<ns2:LocalItem xmlns:ns2="http:///blabla">
<ItemSource>
</ItemSource>
<ConcItemSource>
<name></name>
<requirements/>
<strategy/>
</ConcItemSource>
<dataFormat/>
<directory></directory>
<file/>
</ns2:LocalItem>
</GenericItem>
</ns:ItemList>

Answer 1

Using xmlstarlet :
$ cat bpel.xml
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<ns:ItemList xmlns:ns="http:///blabla">
<GenericItem>
<ns2:LocalItem xmlns:ns2="http:///blabla">
<ItemSource> </ItemSource>
<ConcItemSource>
<name></name>
<requirements/>
<strategy/>
</ConcItemSource>
<dataFormat/>
<directory>d1</directory>
<file/>
</ns2:LocalItem>
</GenericItem>
<GenericItem>
<ns2:LocalItem xmlns:ns2="http:///blabla">
<ItemSource>
</ItemSource>
<ConcItemSource>
<name></name>
<requirements/>
<strategy/>
</ConcItemSource>
<dataFormat/>
<directory>d2</directory>
<file/>
</ns2:LocalItem>
</GenericItem>
</ns:ItemList>
command line :
$ dir1=$(xmlstarlet sel -t -v '//directory[1]/text()' bpel.xml)
$ echo "$dir1"
d1
Using a for loop :
$ count=$(xmlstarlet sel -t -v 'count(//directory)' bpel.xml)
$ for ((i=1; i<=count; i++)) {
xmlstarlet sel -t -v "//directory[$i]/text()" bpel.xml >> newfile
}
But you can do simply :
$ xmlstarlet sel -t -v "//directory/text()" bpel.xml >> newfile
xmlstarlet from STDIN :
command_producing_xml | xmlstarlet sel -t -v "//directory/text()" -