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 '' 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:

Here is a list of platforms on which XmlStarlet is known to work.

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.

Execute the following command as root

rpm -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 root

gunzip 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$ 
XMLStarlet Toolkit: Command line utilities for XML
Usage:  [<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:  <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>

 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:

 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:

 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:

 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 ' sel' command:

XMLStarlet Toolkit: Select from XML document(s)
Usage:  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

 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 ' select' works:

EXAMPLE:

Count elements matching XPath expression:

 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

$  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:

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.

 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)

 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/>" |  sel -t -v "math:abs(-1000)"

Result output:

1000

EXAMPLE

Adding elements and attributes using command line ' sel'

echo "<x/>" |  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

 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

 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 sel (advanced XPath expressions and sel command usage)

 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

 sel --net --html -T -t -m "//*[local-name()='a']" \
   -o 'NAME: ' -v "translate(. , '
', ' ')" -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 ' tr' command:

XMLStarlet Toolkit: Transform XML document(s) using XSLT
Usage:  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
 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 ' ed' command:

XMLStarlet Toolkit: Edit XML document(s)
Usage:  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
 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>' |  ed -m "//b" "//a"

Output

<x id="1">
  <a>
    <b/>
  </a>
</x>

EXAMPLE

# Rename attributes
 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
 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
 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
 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 ' val' command:

XMLStarlet Toolkit: Validate XML document(s)
Usage:  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
 val --dtd dtd/table.dtd xml/tab-obj.xml >/dev/null 2>&1; echo $?

Output:

1

EXAMPLE

# Validate against XSD schema
 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 ' fo' command:

XMLStarlet Toolkit: Format XML document
Usage:  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 |  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
 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 ' c14n' command:

XMLStarlet Toolkit: XML canonicalization
Usage:  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
 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
 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 ' pyx' command:

XMLStarlet Toolkit: Convert XML into PYX format (based on ESIS - ISO 8879)
Usage:  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

 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.

 pyx input.xml | grep -v  "^A" |  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 ' esc' command:

 esc --help
XMLStarlet Toolkit: Escape special XML characters
Usage:  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 |  esc

Input

<a1>
  <a11>
    <a111>
      <a1111/>
    </a111>
    <a112>
      <a1121/>
    </a112>
  </a11>
  <a12/>
  <a13>
    <a131/>
  </a13>
</a1>

Output

<a1>
  <a11>
    <a111>
      <a1111/>
    </a111>
    <a112>
      <a1121/>
    </a112>
  </a11>
  <a12/>
  <a13>
    <a131/>
  </a13>
</a1>

Here is synopsis for ' ls' command:

XMLStarlet Toolkit: List directory as XML
Usage:  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

 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

 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

 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:

 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>' |  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>' |  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 help

 sel -t -m "//line[contains(text(),"'")]" -c .

Let's take a look at XSLT produced by the following ' sel' command:

# Query XML document and produce sorted text table
 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 ' 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.