What is the ideal way to parse an .xml file into a .csv file that I could include with my shell scripts.  I know bash can't do it but I'm unsure if I should try in awk or sed.  I imagine a language would be the best solution such as python but I do not know python nor have I touched it.  
How to parse XML to CSV with a shell script?
shell script;xml
You could use Xmlstarlet (AKA xml) as a XSLT transformer and write a specific CSV transform as mentioned here https://stackoverflow.com/a/952389/1481060 