Xul 2.0.1

XML (XPath, XSD, XSLT) Utilities

Xul is a set of XML scripts written in Python. Documentation can be found on Read The Docs.

Xul scripts

• ppx: pretty print XML
• xp: select nodes in XML source
• transform: transform XML with XSLT
• validate: validate an XML source

Installation

The Xul command line scripts can be installed with pip:

$ pip install Xul

Install Pygments for XML syntax highlighting (optional).

$ pip install Pygments

Dependencies

Xul uses the excellent lxml XML toolkit, a Pythonic binding for the C libraries libxml2 and libxslt.

Options

The --help option displays the parameters of a script:

$ ppx --help

Usage:  ppx [-nr] xml_source_1 ... xml_source_n

Pretty Print XML source in human readable form.

Options:
  --version             show program's version number and exit
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -n, --no-syntax       no syntax highlighting
  -r, --remove-declaration
                        remove the XML declaration

XML source

An XML source can be a local file, an URL or a pipe.

File

Pretty print any local XML file with ppx:

ppx data_dump.xml

Pipe

You can redirect output (pipe) to a Xul script:

curl -s https://www.python.org/dev/peps/peps.rss/ | ppx

URL

libxml2 supports loading XML through HTTP (and FTP). For example, to pretty print an RSS feed:

ppx http://feeds.feedburner.com/PythonInsider

Loading XML through HTTPS is not supported and will result in an failed to load external entity error.

XML standards

W3C XML standards:

• Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0
• XML Schema 1.0
• XSL Transformations (XSLT) 1.0
• XML Path Language (XPath) 1.0
• Namespaces in XML 1.0
• Extensions to XSLT (EXSLT)