The Wiert Corner – irregular stream of stuff

A while ago, I heard about xmllint, a program that can parse and query xml from the command-line.

Later, I discovered it can also parse html, can recover from xml/html errors and has an interactive shell that has a lot of commands (see table below) to navigate through the loaded command.

The relevant command-line options:

--recover
--html
--shell

Note that --recover will output failing input to stderr. You can ignore that using 2> /dev/null

Some good examples of usage are here:

• Hack 35 Explore a Document Tree with the xmllint Shell :: Chapter 3. Transforming XML Documents :: xml hacks :: XML :: eTutorials.org.
• Your XML friend XPATH command line xmllint » Linux by Examples. (it uses the grep command which is not in the official command table below)
• The xmllint Shell. (mentions the grep command, but no example of it)
• openSUSE Lizards: Playing With XPath Expressions in The xmllint Shell.
• Re: [xml] xmllint – Browsing in file with default namespace.
• xpath – Possible to process XHTML with Saxon? – Stack Overflow.

The table of shell commands:

Shell

xmllint offers an interactive shell mode invoked with the –shell command. Available commands in shell mode include:

Command	Parameter	Description
base		display XML base of the node
bye		leave shell
cat	node	Display node if given or current node.
cd	path	Change the current node to path (if given and unique) or root if no argument given.
dir	path	Dumps information about the node (namespace, attributes, content).
du	path	Show the structure of the subtree under path or the current node.
exit		Leave the shell.
help		Show this help.
free		Display memory usage.
load	name	Load a new document with the given name.
ls	path	List contents of path (if given) or the current directory.
pwd		Display the path to the current node.
quit		Leave the shell.
save	name	Saves the current document to name if given or to the original name.
validate		Check the document for error.
write	name	Write the current node to the given filename.

–jeroen

via xmllint.