June 16, 2004 Mikhail Grushinskiy XMLStarlet is a set of command line utilities (tools) which can be used to transform, query, validate, and edit XML documents and files using simple set of shell commands in similar way it is done for plain text files using UNIX grep, sed, awk, diff, patch, join, etc commands. This set of command line utilities can be used by those who deal with many XML documents on UNIX shell command prompt as well as for automated XML processing with shell scripts. XMLStarlet command line utility is written in C and uses libxml2 and libxslt from http://xmlsoft.org/. Implementation of extensive choice of options for XMLStarlet utility was only possible because of rich feature set of libxml2 and libxslt (many thanks to the developers of those libraries for great work). 'diff' and 'patch' options are not currently implemented. Other features need some work too. Please, send an email to the project administrator (see http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmlstar/) if you wish to help. XMLStarlet is linked statically to both libxml2 and libxslt, so generally all you need to process XML documents is one executable file. To run XmlStarlet utility you can simple type 'xml' on command line and see list of options available. XMLStarlet is open source freeware under MIT license which allows free use and distribution for both commercial and non-commercial projects. We welcome any user's feedback on this project which would greatly help us to improve its quality. Comments, suggestions, feature requests, bug reports can be done via SourceForge project web site (see XMLStarlet Sourceforge forums, or XMLStarlet mailing list) The toolkit's feature set includes options to: Check or validate XML files (simple well-formedness check, DTD, XSD, RelaxNG) Calculate values of XPath expressions on XML files (such as running sums, etc) Search XML files for matches to given XPath expressions Apply XSLT stylesheets to XML documents (including EXSLT support, and passing parameters to stylesheets) Query XML documents (ex. query for value of some elements of attributes, sorting, etc) Modify or edit XML documents (ex. delete some elements) Format or "beautify" XML documents (as changing indentation, etc) Fetch XML documents using http:// or ftp:// URLs Browse tree structure of XML documents (in similar way to 'ls' command for directories) Include one XML document into another using XInclude XML c14n canonicalization Escape/unescape special XML characters in input text Print directory as XML document Convert XML into PYX format (based on ESIS - ISO 8879), and vice versa Here is a list of platforms on which XmlStarlet is known to work. Linux Solaris Windows MacOS X FreeBSD/NetBSD HP-UX AIX You might be able to compile and make it on others too. Here is a list of sites where you can also find XmlStarlet binary packages. SuSE Packages SuSE Guru's RPM Site FreeBSD Ports FreeBSD Fresh Ports Mac OS Fink Mandrake RPMs Gentoo Portage Execute the following command as rootrpm -i xmlstarlet-x.x.x-1.i386.rpm where x.x.x indicates package version. You can use http://rpmfind.net to search for RPM appropriate for your distribution. Execute the following commands as rootgunzip xmlstarlet-x.x.x-sol8-sparc-local.gz pkgadd -d xmlstarlet-x.x.x-sol8-sparc-local all XmlStarlet is available on MacOS in Fink. See fink.sourceforge.net Unzip the file xmlstarlet-x.x.x-win32.zip to some directory. To take advantage of UNIX shell scripting you might want to run XmlStarlet from Cygwin. Consider installing Cygwin on your Windows machine. Basic command line syntax: bash-2.03$ xml XMLStarlet Toolkit: Command line utilities for XML Usage: xml [<options>] <command> [<cmd-options>] where <command> is one of: ed (or edit) - Edit/Update XML document(s) sel (or select) - Select data or query XML document(s) (XPATH, etc) tr (or transform) - Transform XML document(s) using XSLT val (or validate) - Validate XML document(s) (well-formed/DTD/XSD/RelaxNG) fo (or format) - Format XML document(s) el (or elements) - Display element structure of XML document c14n (or canonic) - XML canonicalization ls (or list) - List directory as XML esc (or escape) - Escape special XML characters unesc (or unescape) - Unescape special XML characters pyx (or xmln) - Convert XML into PYX format (based on ESIS - ISO 8879) p2x (or depyx) - Convert PYX into XML <options> are: --version - show version --help - show help Wherever file name mentioned in command help it is assumed that URL can be used instead as well. Type: xml <command> --help <ENTER> for command help XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) Before you do anything with your XML document you probably would like to know its structure at first. 'el' option could be used for this purpose. Let's say you have the following XML document (table.xml) <xml> <table> <rec id="1"> <numField>123</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="2"> <numField>346</numField> <stringField>Text Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="3"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </rec> </table> </xml> xml el table.xml would produce the following output. xml xml/table xml/table/rec xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField xml/table/rec xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField xml/table/rec xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField Every line in this output is an XPath expression which indicates a 'path' to elements in XML document. You would use these XPath expressions to navigate through your XML documents in other XmlStarlet options. XML documents can be pretty large but with a very simple structure. (This is espesially true for data driven XML documents ex: XML formatted result of select from SQL table). If you just interested in structure but not order of the elements you can use -u switch combined with 'el' option. EXAMPLE: xml el -u table.xml Output: xml xml/table xml/table/rec xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField If you are interested not just in elements of your XML document, but you want to see attributes as well you can use -a switch with 'el' option. And every line of the output will still be a valid XPath expression. EXAMPLE: xml el -a table.xml Output: xml xml/table xml/table/rec xml/table/rec/@id xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField xml/table/rec xml/table/rec/@id xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField xml/table/rec xml/table/rec/@id xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField If you are looking for attribute values as well use -v switch of 'el' option. And again - every line of output is a valid XPath expression. EXAMPLE: xml el -v table.xml Output: xml xml/table xml/table/rec[@id='1'] xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField xml/table/rec[@id='2'] xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField xml/table/rec[@id='3'] xml/table/rec/numField xml/table/rec/stringField XmlStarlet 'select' or 'sel' option can be used to query or search XML documents. Here is synopsis for 'xml sel' command: XMLStarlet Toolkit: Select from XML document(s) Usage: xml sel <global-options> {<template>} [ <xml-file> ... ] where <global-options> - global options for selecting <xml-file> - input XML document file name/uri (stdin is used if missing) <template> - template for querying XML document with following syntax: <global-options> are: -C or --comp - display generated XSLT -R or --root - print root element <xsl-select> -T or --text - output is text (default is XML) -I or --indent - indent output -D or --xml-decl - do not omit xml declaration line -B or --noblanks - remove insignificant spaces from XML tree -N <name>=<value> - predefine namespaces (name without 'xmlns:') ex: xsql=urn:oracle-xsql Multiple -N options are allowed. --net - allow fetch DTDs or entities over network --help - display help Syntax for templates: -t|--template <options> where <options> -c or --copy-of <xpath> - print copy of XPATH expression -v or --value-of <xpath> - print value of XPATH expression -o or --output <string> - output string literal -n or --nl - print new line -f or --inp-name - print input file name (or URL) -m or --match <xpath> - match XPATH expression -i or --if <test-xpath> - check condition <xsl:if test="test-xpath"> -e or --elem <name> - print out element <xsl:element name="name"> -a or --attr <name> - add attribute <xsl:attribute name="name"> -b or --break - break nesting -s or --sort op xpath - sort in order (used after -m) where op is X:Y:Z, X is A - for order="ascending" X is D - for order="descending" Y is N - for data-type="numeric" Y is T - for data-type="text" Z is U - for case-order="upper-first" Z is L - for case-order="lower-first" There can be multiple --match, --copy-of, --value-of, etc options in a single template. The effect of applying command line templates can be illustrated with the following XSLT analogue xml sel -t -c "xpath0" -m "xpath1" -m "xpath2" -v "xpath3" \ -t -m "xpath4" -c "xpath5" is equivalent to applying the following XSLT <?xml version="1.0"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:call-template name="t1"/> <xsl:call-template name="t2"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="t1"> <xsl:copy-of select="xpath0"/> <xsl:for-each select="xpath1"> <xsl:for-each select="xpath2"> <xsl:value-of select="xpath3"/> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="t2"> <xsl:for-each select="xpath4"> <xsl:copy-of select="xpath5"/> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) Current implementation uses libxslt from GNOME codebase as XSLT processor (see http://xmlsoft.org/ for more details) 'select' option allows you basically avoid writting XSLT stylesheet to perform some queries on XML documents. I.e. various combinations of command line parameters will let you to generate XSLT stylesheet and apply in to XML documents with a single command line. Very often you do not really care what XSLT was created for you 'select' command, but in those cases when you do; you can always use -C or --comp switch which will let you see exactly which XSLT is applied to your input. 'select' option supports many EXSLT functions in XPath expressions. Here are few examples which will help to understand how 'xml select' works: EXAMPLE: Count elements matching XPath expression: xml sel -t -v "count(/xml/table/rec/numField)" table.xml Input (table.xml): <xml> <table> <rec id="1"> <numField>123</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="2"> <numField>346</numField> <stringField>Text Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="3"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </rec> </table> </xml> Output: 3 Let's take a close look what it did internally. For that we will use '-C' option $ xml sel -C -t -v "count(/xml/table/rec/numField)" <?xml version="1.0"?> <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:exslt="http://exslt.org/common" xmlns:math="http://exslt.org/math" xmlns:date="http://exslt.org/dates-and-times" xmlns:func="http://exslt.org/functions" xmlns:set="http://exslt.org/sets" xmlns:str="http://exslt.org/strings" xmlns:dyn="http://exslt.org/dynamic" xmlns:saxon="http://icl.com/saxon" xmlns:xalanredirect="org.apache.xalan.xslt.extensions.Redirect" xmlns:xt="http://www.jclark.com/xt" xmlns:libxslt="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/namespace" xmlns:test="http://xmlsoft.org/XSLT/" extension-element-prefixes= "exslt math date func set str dyn saxon xalanredirect xt libxslt test" exclude-result-prefixes="math str"> <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no"/> <xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:call-template name="t1"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="t1"> <xsl:value-of select="count(/xml/table/rec/numField)"/> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> Ignoring some XSLT stuff to make it brief: <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no"/> <xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:call-template name="t1"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="t1"> <xsl:value-of select="count(/xml/table/rec/numField)"/> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> Every -t option is mapped into XSLT template. Options after '-t' are mapped into XSLT elements: -v to <xsl:value-of> -c to <xsl:copy-of> -e to <xsl:element> -a to <xsl:attribute> -s to <xsl:sort> -m to <xsl:for-each> -i to <xsl:if> and so on By default subsequent options (for instance: -m) will result in nested corresponding XSLT elements (<xsl:for-each> for '-m'). To break this nesting you would have to put '-b' or '--break' after first '-m'. Below are few more examples: EXAMPLE Count all nodes in XML documents. Print input name and node count after it. xml sel -t -f -o " " -v "count(//node())" xml/table.xml xml/tab-obj.xml Output: xml/table.xml 32 xml/tab-obj.xml 41 EXAMPLE Find XML files matching XPath expression (containing 'object' element) xml sel -t -m //object -f xml/table.xml xml/tab-obj.xml Result output: xml/tab-obj.xml EXAMPLE Calculate EXSLT (XSLT extentions) XPath value echo "<x/>" | xml sel -t -v "math:abs(-1000)" Result output: 1000 EXAMPLE Adding elements and attributes using command line 'xml sel' echo "<x/>" | xml sel -t -m / -e xml -e child -a data -o value Result Output: <xml><child data="value"/></xml> EXAMPLE Query XML document and produce sorted text table xml sel -T -t -m /xml/table/rec -s D:N:- "@id" \ -v "concat(@id,'|',numField,'|',stringField)" -n xml/table.xml Result Output: 3|-23|stringValue 2|346|Text Value 1|123|String Value Equivalent stylesheet <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no" method="text"/> <xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:call-template name="t1"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="t1"> <xsl:for-each select="/xml/table/rec"> <xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number" case-order="upper-first" select="@id"/> <xsl:value-of select="concat(@id,'|',numField,'|',stringField)"/> <xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> EXAMPLE Predefine namespaces for XPath expressions xml sel -N xsql=urn:oracle-xsql -t -v /xsql:query xsql/jobserve.xsql Input (xsql/jobserve.xsql) $ cat xsql/jobserve.xsql <?xml version="1.0"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="jobserve.xsl"?> <xsql:query connection="jobs" xmlns:xsql="urn:oracle-xsql" max-rows="5"> SELECT substr(title,1,26) short_title, title, location, skills FROM job WHERE UPPER(title) LIKE '%ORACLE%' ORDER BY first_posted DESC </xsql:query> Result output SELECT substr(title,1,26) short_title, title, location, skills FROM job WHERE UPPER(title) LIKE '%ORACLE%' ORDER BY first_posted DESC EXAMPLE Print structure of XML element using xml sel (advanced XPath expressions and xml sel command usage) xml sel -T -t -m '//*' \ -m 'ancestor-or-self::*' -v 'name()' -i 'not(position()=last())' -o . -b -b -n \ xml/structure.xml Input (xml/structure.xml) <a1> <a11> <a111> <a1111/> </a111> <a112> <a1121/> </a112> </a11> <a12/> <a13> <a131/> </a13> </a1> Result Output: a1 a1.a11 a1.a11.a111 a1.a11.a111.a1111 a1.a11.a112 a1.a11.a112.a1121 a1.a12 a1.a13 a1.a13.a131 This example is a good demonstration of nesting control. Here is corresponding XSLT: <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no" method="text"/> <xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:call-template name="t1"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="t1"> <xsl:for-each select="//*"> <xsl:for-each select="ancestor-or-self::*"> <xsl:value-of select="name()"/> <xsl:if test="not(position()=last())"> <xsl:value-of select="'.'"/> </xsl:if> </xsl:for-each> <xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> EXAMPLE Print all links of xhtml document xml sel --net --html -T -t -m "//*[local-name()='a']" \ -o 'NAME: ' -v "translate(. , '&#10;', ' ')" -n \ -o 'LINK: ' -v @href -n -n \ http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/ Sample output NAME: XmlStarlet SourceForge Site LINK: http://sourceforge.net/projects/xmlstar/ NAME: XmlStarlet CVS Source LINK: http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/xmlstar/ NAME: XmlStarlet on Freshmeat.Net LINK: http://freshmeat.net/projects/xmlstarlet/ NAME: XMLStarlet Sourceforge forums LINK: http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=66612 NAME: XMLStarlet mailing list LINK: http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/xmlstar-devel Here is synopsis for 'xml tr' command: XMLStarlet Toolkit: Transform XML document(s) using XSLT Usage: xml tr [<options>] <xsl-file> {-p|-s <name>=<value>} [ <xml-file-or-uri> ... ] where <xsl-file> - main XSLT stylesheet for transformation <xml-file> - input XML document file name (stdin is used if missing) <name>=<value> - name and value of the parameter passed to XSLT processor -p - parameter is XPATH expression ("'string'" to quote string) -s - parameter is a string literal <options> are: --omit-decl - omit xml declaration <?xml version="1.0"?> --show-ext - show list of extensions --val - allow validate against DTDs or schemas --net - allow fetch DTDs or entities over network --xinclude - do XInclude processing on document input --maxdepth val - increase the maximum depth --html - input document(s) is(are) in HTML format --catalogs - use SGML catalogs from $SGML_CATALOG_FILES otherwise XML catalogs starting from file:///etc/xml/catalog are activated by default XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) Current implementation uses libxslt from GNOME codebase as XSLT processor (see http://xmlsoft.org/ for more details) EXAMPLE: # Transform passing parameters to XSLT stylesheet xml tr xsl/param1.xsl -p Count='count(/xml/table/rec)' -s Text="Count=" xml/table.xml Input xsl/params1.xsl <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="text"/> <xsl:param name="Text"/> <xsl:param name="Count"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:call-template name="t1"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="t1"> <xsl:for-each select="/xml"> <xsl:value-of select="$Text"/> <xsl:value-of select="$Count"/> <xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> Output Count=3 Here is the synopsis for 'xml ed' command: XMLStarlet Toolkit: Edit XML document(s) Usage: xml ed <global-options> {<action>} [ <xml-file-or-uri> ... ] where <global-options> - global options for editing <xml-file-or-uri> - input XML document file name/uri (stdin is used if missing) <global-options> are: -P (or --pf) - preserve original formatting -S (or --ps) - preserve non-significant spaces -O (or --omit-decl) - omit XML declaration (<?xml ...?>) -N <name>=<value> - predefine namespaces (name without 'xmlns:') ex: xsql=urn:oracle-xsql Multiple -N options are allowed. -N options must be last global options. --help or -h - display help where <action> -d or --delete <xpath> -i or --insert <xpath> -t (--type) elem|text|attr -n <name> -v (--value) <value> -a or --append <xpath> -t (--type) elem|text|attr -n <name> -v (--value) <value> -s or --subnode <xpath> -t (--type) elem|text|attr -n <name> -v (--value) <value> -m or --move <xpath1> <xpath2> -r or --rename <xpath1> -v <new-name> -u or --update <xpath> -v (--value) <value> -x (--expr) <xpath> (-x is not implemented yet) XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) EXAMPLE: # Delete elements matching XPath expression xml ed -d "/xml/table/rec[@id='2']" xml/table.xml Input <xml> <table> <rec id="1"> <numField>123</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="2"> <numField>346</numField> <stringField>Text Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="3"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </rec> </table> </xml> Output <xml> <table> <rec id="1"> <numField>123</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="3"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </rec> </table> </xml> EXAMPLE # Move element node echo '<x id="1"><a/><b/></x>' | xml ed -m "//b" "//a" Output <x id="1"> <a> <b/> </a> </x> EXAMPLE # Rename attributes xml ed -r "//*/@id" -v ID xml/tab-obj.xml Output: <xml> <table> <rec ID="1"> <numField>123</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> <object name="Obj1"> <property name="size">10</property> <property name="type">Data</property> </object> </rec> <rec ID="2"> <numField>346</numField> <stringField>Text Value</stringField> </rec> <rec ID="3"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </rec> </table> </xml> EXAMPLE # Rename elements xml ed -r "/xml/table/rec" -v record xml/tab-obj.xml Output: <xml> <table> <record id="1"> <numField>123</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> <object name="Obj1"> <property name="size">10</property> <property name="type">Data</property> </object> </record> <record id="2"> <numField>346</numField> <stringField>Text Value</stringField> </record> <record id="3"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </record> </table> </xml> EXAMPLE # Update value of an attribute xml ed -u "/xml/table/rec[@id=3]/@id" -v 5 xml/tab-obj.xml Output: <xml> <table> <rec id="1"> <numField>123</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> <object name="Obj1"> <property name="size">10</property> <property name="type">Data</property> </object> </rec> <rec id="2"> <numField>346</numField> <stringField>Text Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="5"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </rec> </table> </xml> EXAMPLE # Update value of an element xml ed -u "/xml/table/rec[@id=1]/numField" -v 0 xml/tab-obj.xml Output: <xml> <table> <rec id="1"> <numField>0</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> <object name="Obj1"> <property name="size">10</property> <property name="type">Data</property> </object> </rec> <rec id="2"> <numField>346</numField> <stringField>Text Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="3"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </rec> </table> </xml> Here is synopsis for 'xml val' command: XMLStarlet Toolkit: Validate XML document(s) Usage: xml val <options> [ <xml-file-or-uri> ... ] where <options> -w or --well-formed - validate well-formedness only (default) -d or --dtd <dtd-file> - validate against DTD -s or --xsd <xsd-file> - validate against XSD schema -r or --relaxng <rng-file> - validate against Relax-NG schema -e or --err - print verbose error messages on stderr -b or --list-bad - list only files which do not validate -g or --list-good - list only files which validate -q or --quiet - do not list files (return result code only) NOTE: XML Schemas are not fully supported yet due to its incomplete support in libxml (see http://xmlsoft.org) XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) EXAMPLE # Validate XML document against DTD xml val --dtd dtd/table.dtd xml/tab-obj.xml >/dev/null 2>&1; echo $? Output: 1 EXAMPLE # Validate against XSD schema xml val -b -s xsd/table.xsd xml/table.xml xml/tab-obj.xml 2>/dev/null; echo $? Output: xml/tab-obj.xml 1 Here is synopsis for 'xml fo' command: XMLStarlet Toolkit: Format XML document Usage: xml fo [<options>] <xml-file> where <options> are -n or --noindent - do not indent -t or --indent-tab - indent output with tabulation -s or --indent-spaces <num> - indent output with <num> spaces -o or --omit-decl - omit xml declaration <?xml version="1.0"?> -R or --recover - try to recover what is parsable -D or --dropdtd - remove the DOCTYPE of the input docs -C or --nocdata - replace cdata section with text nodes -N or --nsclean - remove redundant namespace declarations -e or --encode <encoding> - output in the given encoding (utf-8, unicode...) -H or --html - input is HTML -h or --help - print help XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) EXAMPLE # Format XML document disabling indent cat xml/tab-obj.xml | xml fo --noindent Output: <xml> <table> <rec id="1"> <numField>123</numField> <stringField>String Value</stringField> <object name="Obj1"> <property name="size">10</property> <property name="type">Data</property> </object> </rec> <rec id="2"> <numField>346</numField> <stringField>Text Value</stringField> </rec> <rec id="3"> <numField>-23</numField> <stringField>stringValue</stringField> </rec> </table> </xml> EXAMPLE # Recover malformed XML document xml fo -R xml/malformed.xml 2>/dev/null Input: <test_output> <test_name>foo</testname> <subtest>...</subtest> </test_output> Output: <test_output> <test_name>foo</test_name> <subtest>...</subtest> </test_output> Here is synopsis for 'xml c14n' command: XMLStarlet Toolkit: XML canonicalization Usage: xml c14n <mode> <xml-file> [<xpath-file>] [<inclusive-ns-list>] where <xml-file> - input XML document file name (stdin is used if '-') <xpath-file> - XML file containing XPath expression for c14n XML canonicalization Example: <?xml version="1.0"?> <XPath xmlns:n0="http://a.example.com" xmlns:n1="http://b.example"> (//. | //@* | //namespace::*)[ancestor-or-self::n1:elem1] </XPath> <inclusive-ns-list> - the list of inclusive namespace prefixes (only for exclusive canonicalization) Example: 'n1 n2' <mode> is one of following: --with-comments XML file canonicalization w comments (default) --without-comments XML file canonicalization w/o comments --exc-with-comments Exclusive XML file canonicalization w comments --exc-without-comments Exclusive XML file canonicalization w/o comments XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) EXAMPLE # XML canonicalization xml c14n --with-comments ../examples/xml/structure.xml ; echo $? Input ../examples/xml/structure.xml <a1> <a11> <a111> <a1111/> </a111> <a112> <a1121/> </a112> </a11> <a12/> <a13> <a131/> </a13> </a1> Output <a1> <a11> <a111> <a1111></a1111> </a111> <a112> <a1121></a1121> </a112> </a11> <a12></a12> <a13> <a131></a131> </a13> </a1> 0 EXAMPLE # XML exclusive canonicalization xml c14n --exc-with-comments ../examples/xml/c14n.xml ../examples/xml/c14n.xpath Input ../examples/xml/c14n.xml <n0:pdu xmlns:n0='http://a.example.com'> <n1:elem1 xmlns:n1='http://b.example'> content </n1:elem1> </n0:pdu> ../examples/xml/c14n.xpath <XPath xmlns:n0="http://a.example.com" xmlns:n1="http://b.example"> (//. | //@* | //namespace::*)[ancestor-or-self::n1:elem1] </XPath> Output <n1:elem1 xmlns:n1="http://b.example"> content </n1:elem1> Here is synopsis for 'xml pyx' command: XMLStarlet Toolkit: Convert XML into PYX format (based on ESIS - ISO 8879) Usage: xml pyx {<xml-file>} where <xml-file> - input XML document file name (stdin is used if missing) The PYX format is a line-oriented representation of XML documents that is derived from the SGML ESIS format. (see ESIS - ISO 8879 Element Structure Information Set spec, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC18/WG8 N931 (ESIS)) A non-validating, ESIS generating tool originally developed for pyxie project (see http://pyxie.sourceforge.net/) ESIS Generation by Sean Mc Grath http://www.digitome.com/sean.html XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) EXAMPLE xml pyx input.xml Input (input.xml) <books> <book type='hardback'> <title>Atlas Shrugged</title> <author>Ayn Rand</author> <isbn id='1'>0525934189</isbn> </book> </books> Output (books -\n (book Atype hardback -\n (title -Atlas Shrugged )title -\n (author -Ayn Rand )author -\n (isbn Aid 1 -0525934189 )isbn -\n )book -\n )books PYX is a line oriented format for XML files which can be helpful (and very efficient) when used in combination with regular line oriented UNIX command such as sed, grep, awk. 'depyx' option is used for conversion back from PYX into XML. EXAMPLE (Delete all attributes). This should work really fast for very large XML documents. xml pyx input.xml | grep -v "^A" | xml depyx Output <books> <book> <title>Atlas Shrugged</title> <author>Ayn Rand</author> <isbn>0525934189</isbn> </book> </books> Here is an article which describes how PYX format can be used to grep XML. http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/xml/library/x-matters17.html Here is synopsis for 'xml esc' command: xml esc --help XMLStarlet Toolkit: Escape special XML characters Usage: xml esc [<options>] [<string>] where <options> are --help - print usage (TODO: more to be added in future) if <string> is missing stdin is used instead. XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) EXAMPLE # Escape special XML characters cat xml/structure.xml | xml esc Input <a1> <a11> <a111> <a1111/> </a111> <a112> <a1121/> </a112> </a11> <a12/> <a13> <a131/> </a13> </a1> Output &lt;a1&gt; &lt;a11&gt; &lt;a111&gt; &lt;a1111/&gt; &lt;/a111&gt; &lt;a112&gt; &lt;a1121/&gt; &lt;/a112&gt; &lt;/a11&gt; &lt;a12/&gt; &lt;a13&gt; &lt;a131/&gt; &lt;/a13&gt; &lt;/a1&gt; Here is synopsis for 'xml ls' command: XMLStarlet Toolkit: List directory as XML Usage: xml ls Lists current directory in XML format. XMLStarlet is a command line toolkit to query/edit/check/transform XML documents (for more information see http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) EXAMPLE xml ls Output <xml> <d p="rwxrwxrwx" a="20050107T050740Z" m="20050107T050740Z" s="0" n="old-resume"/> <f p="rw-rw-rw-" a="20050107T045941Z" m="20050107T045941Z" s="12" n="resume.2old"/> <f p="rw-rw-rw-" a="20050107T045924Z" m="20050107T045924Z" s="81" n="resume.xml"/> </xml> One of the commonly asked questions about XmlStarlet 'select' or 'edit' options is: "Why nothing matched for my XPath expression which seems right to me?". Common cause of these problems is not properly defining a namespace for XPath. This chapter will show several examples to illustrate these issues you might encounter. For example the following XHTML document has a default namespace declaration <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head> <title>Query Page</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Script-Type" content="text/javascript" /> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow" /> </head> <body> ... </body> </html> And the following (initially looking correct) query to print all links xml sel -t -m "//a" -c . -n would return nothing. The issue with this query is that it is not addressing element <a> in the right namespace. XPath requires all namespaces used in XPath expression be defined. So for declared namespace <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> in input XML, you have to do same for XPath (or XSLT). There is another important detail: namespace equivalency is determined not by namespace prefix, but by URI. See query below, which would return expected result xml sel -N x="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" -t -m "//x:a" -c . -n Example of deleting namespace declarations. Delete namespace declarations and all elements from non default namespace from the following XML document: Input (file ns2.xml)<doc xmlns="http://www.a.com/xyz" xmlns:ns="http://www.c.com/xyz"> <A>test</A> <B> <ns:C>xyz</ns:C> </B> </doc> Command:xml ed -N N="http://www.c.com/xyz" -d '//N:*' ns2.xml | \ sed -e 's/ xmlns.*=".*"//g' Output<doc> <A>test</A> <B/> </doc> Sometimes issues appear with handling of special characters, where 'special' means in XML sence as well as in 'shell' terms. Examples below should clear at least some of the confusions. You should not forget about the fact that your command lines are executed by shell and shell does substitutions of its special characters too. So for example, one may ask: "Why does the following query return nothing?"echo '<X name="foo">EEE</X>' | xml sel -t -m /X[@name='foo'] -v . The answer lies in the way shell substitues 'foo', which simply becomes foo before the command is run. So the correct way to write that would be echo '<X name="foo">EEE</X>' | xml sel -t -m "/X[@name='foo']" -v . Another example involves XML special characters. Question: How to search for &apos; in text nodes? The following should helpxml sel -t -m "//line[contains(text(),&quot;'&quot;)]" -c . Let's take a look at XSLT produced by the following 'xml sel' command: # Query XML document and produce sorted text table xml sel -T -t -m /xml/table/rec -s D:N:- "@id" \ -v "concat(@id,'|',numField,'|',stringField)" -n xml/table.xml <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output omit-xml-declaration="yes" indent="no" method="text"/> <xsl:param name="inputFile">-</xsl:param> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:call-template name="t1"/> </xsl:template> <xsl:template name="t1"> <xsl:for-each select="/xml/table/rec"> <xsl:sort order="descending" data-type="number" case-order="upper-first" select="@id"/> <xsl:value-of select="concat(@id,'|',numField,'|',stringField)"/> <xsl:value-of select="'&#10;'"/> </xsl:for-each> </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet> -s option of 'xml sel' command controls 'order', 'data-type', and 'case-order' attributes of <xsl:sort/> element . Many questions are asked about XSD (XML schema) validation. Well, XmlStarlet relies on libxml2 which has incomplete support for XML schemas. Untill it is done in libxml2 it will not be in XmlStarlet.