The xmllint program parses one or more XML files, specified on the command line as xmlfile. It prints various types of output, depending upon the options selected. It is useful for detecting errors both in XML code and in the XML parser itself.
It is included in libxml2.
OPTIONS
--version
Display the version of libxml2 used.
--debug
Parse a file and output an annotated tree of the in-memory version of the document.
--shell
Run a navigating shell. Details on available commands in shell mode are below.
--debugent
Debug the entities defined in the document.
--copy
Test the internal copy implementation.
--recover
Output any parsable portions of an invalid document.
--noent
Substitute entity values for entity references. By default, xmllint leaves entity references in place.
--nocdata
Substitute CDATA section by equivalent text nodes.
--nsclean
Remove redundant namespace declarations.
--noout
Suppress output. By default, xmllint outputs the result tree.
--htmlout
Output results as an HTML file. This causes xmllint to output the necessary HTML tags surrounding the result tree output so the results can be displayed in a browser.
--nowrap
Do not output HTML doc wrapper.
--valid
Determine if the document is a valid instance of the included Document Type Definition (DTD). A DTD to be validated against also can be specified at the command line using the --dtdvalid option. By default, xmllint also checks to determine if the document is well-formed.
--postvalid
Validate after parsing is completed.
--dtdvalidURL
Use the DTD specified by URL for validation.
--dtdvalidfpiFPI
Use the DTD specified by the Public Identifier FPI for validation, note that this will require a Catalog exporting that Public Identifier to work.
--timing
Output information about the time it takes xmllint to perform the various steps.
--repeat
Repeat 100 times, for timing or profiling.
--insert
Test for valid insertions.
--compress
Turn on gzip compression of output.
--html
Use the HTML parser.
--push
Use the push mode of the parser.
--memory
Parse from memory.
--nowarning
Do not emit warnings from the parser and/or validator.
--noblanks
Drop ignorable blank spaces.
--format
Reformat and reindent the output. The $XMLLINT_INDENT environment variable controls the indentation (default value is two spaces " ").
--testIO
Test user input/output support.
--encodeencoding
Output in the given encoding.
--catalogs
Use the catalogs from $SGML_CATALOG_FILES. Otherwise /etc/xml/catalog is used by default.
--nocatalogs
Do not use any catalogs.
--auto
Generate a small document for testing purposes.
--xinclude
Do XInclude processing.
--loaddtd
Fetch external DTD.
--dtdattr
Fetch external DTD and populate the tree with inherited attributes.
--dropdtd
Remove DTD from output.
--stream
Use streaming API - useful when used in combination with --relaxng or --valid options for validation of files that are too large to be held in memory.
--chkregister
Turn on node registration. Useful for developeres testing libxml2 node tracking code.
--relaxngschema
Use RelaxNG file named schema for validation.
--schemaschema
Use a W3C XML Schema file named schema for validation.
--nonet
Do not use the Internet to fetch DTD's or entities.
SHELL
xmllint offers an interactive shell mode invoked with the --shell command. Available commands in shell mode include:
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.
DEBUGGING CATALOGS
Setting the environment variable XML_DEBUG_CATALOG using the command "export XML_DEBUG_CATALOG=" outputs debugging information related to catalog operations.