xmlstarlet

A command-line XML/XSLT toolkit. Note: You will likely need to know XPath: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/XPath. More information: https://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/docs.php.

• Format an XML document and print to stdout:

xmlstarlet format path/to/file.xml

• XML document can also be piped from stdin:

cat path/to/file.xml | xmlstarlet format

• Print all nodes that match a given XPath:

xmlstarlet select --template --copy-of xpath path/to/file.xml

• Insert an attribute to all matching nodes, and print to stdout (source file is unchanged):

xmlstarlet edit --insert xpath --type attr --name attribute_name --value attribute_value path/to/file.xml

• Update the value of all matching nodes in place (source file is changed):

xmlstarlet edit --inplace --update xpath --value new_value file.xml

• Delete all matching nodes in place (source file is changed):

xmlstarlet edit --inplace --delete xpath file.xml

• Escape or unescape special XML characters in a given string:

xmlstarlet [un]escape string

• List a given directory as XML (omit argument to list current directory):

xmlstarlet ls path/to/directory