How would I export grouped objects?

[scottyu2012]

I could export group objects in SVG using --pattern "^g" but then it exports the grouped object and its parts.

Is there a way it could just do the grouped object and not its subparts?

The SVG is has and sub but I just want it to create object from first

[berteh]

Hello.

If you do not have many groups I would recommend changing their id (via object > property dialog in Inkscape) to something meaningful that does not start with 'g'... and you would be done (specifying no pattern on the tool command line exports only the objects with a changed id).

If finding the groups to export only based on their id is not possible, then the only option left is to use the available xpath support. Easier if you know your way around the xml representation of SVG (read on!)

If you can easily manage to put the groups to be exported on the same "depth" (eg: all the first groups in a layer, or all groups in groups in layers) then things are easy enough:

svg-objects-export --xpath "/svg:svg/svg:g/svg:g/svg:g" -d depth3groups/ in.svg

It's easy too if you manage to group all the groups you want to export in a single group which id you can change:

svg-objects-export --xpath "//svg:g[@id='parent-id']/svg:g" -d childrenOfParentID/ in.svg

But if you really need to cope for groups in all levels of depths it's a bit more complicated: you'll want to export all groups (//svg:g) with an id that starts with g (the Inkscape default, using regular expressions to filter them: [re:test(@id, '^g', 'i')]), that have no direct parent group (../../svg:g) with a similar id:

svg-objects-export --xpath "//svg:g[re:test(@id, '^g', 'i')][ not(../../svg:g[re:test(@id, '^g', 'i')]) ]" -d groupWithNoParentGroup/ in.svg

Hope this helps.