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I need to audit XML file structures and need to generate a report that shows only the DOM tree structure and omit the values. Essentially, I just the node names only and no values. I tried using xmllint and xmlstarlet but can't figure out how to do this.

Does anyone know of any tools or examples of above tools that do this?

cat $filename.xml | xmlstarlet format -t gives me what I need, but I want to omit all values.

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  • 2
    Please edit your question and add an example input file and the output you would want from that example so we can test our answers. I realize you want a general solution, but we'll still need a file to play with.
    – terdon ♦
    Jul 8, 2021 at 14:37
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    "I need to audit XML file structures" if you have an XSD that describes the XML you want to validate, then there are tools such as xmlstarlet that will do this for you already.
    – Chris Davies
    Jul 8, 2021 at 15:25
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    Do you want to output the elements, but without textual contents? Or just the tag names used? What about attributes? What about comments or XML processing instructions? Would a straight list of each element's XPath suffice? What ave you searched/researched/tried?
    – C. M.
    Jul 8, 2021 at 20:06

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
9

The xmllint interactive shell command du appears to provide what you want:

   du PATH
       Show the structure of the subtree under the given path or the current node.

If you want something non-interactive, then perhaps

printf '%s\n' du exit | xmllint --shell file.xml

or

xmllint --shell file.xml <<EOF
du
exit
EOF

ex.

$ printf '%s\n' du exit | xmllint --shell rss.xml
/ > /
rss
  channel
    title
    link
    description
    copyright
    language
    lastBuildDate
    image
      url
      title
      link
    item
      title
      link
      description
      pubDate
    item
      title
      link
      description
      pubDate
    item
      title
      link
      description
      pubDate
/ >
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  • this was perfect. thanks. option 2 worked well.
    – Kinnara
    Jul 8, 2021 at 15:32
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Since you're already using xmlstarlet you may as well continue using it.

The xmlstarlet tool has an el (elements) sub-command which is used to "Display element structure of XML document".

By default, it outputs data like this:

$ xmlstarlet el /usr/X11R6/share/xcb/ge.xml
xcb
xcb/request
xcb/request/field
xcb/request/field
xcb/request/reply
xcb/request/reply/pad
xcb/request/reply/field
xcb/request/reply/field
xcb/request/reply/pad

You may also get attributes:

$ xmlstarlet el -a /usr/X11R6/share/xcb/ge.xml
xcb
xcb/@header
xcb/@extension-xname
xcb/@extension-name
xcb/@major-version
xcb/@minor-version
xcb/request
xcb/request/@name
xcb/request/@opcode
xcb/request/field
xcb/request/field/@type
xcb/request/field/@name
xcb/request/field
xcb/request/field/@type
xcb/request/field/@name
xcb/request/reply
xcb/request/reply/pad
xcb/request/reply/pad/@bytes
xcb/request/reply/field
xcb/request/reply/field/@type
xcb/request/reply/field/@name
xcb/request/reply/field
xcb/request/reply/field/@type
xcb/request/reply/field/@name
xcb/request/reply/pad
xcb/request/reply/pad/@bytes

See also xmlstarlet el --help.

Using the val (validate) sub-command ("Validate XML document(s) (well-formed/DTD/XSD/RelaxNG)"), xmlstarlet may validate your XML document for you. It will, by default, just check whether the document is well formed, but it may also validate your document against a provided XSD schema, the document's DTD, or an Relax-NG schema.

See also xmlstarlet val --help.

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