xsltproc

TLDR

Transform XML using an XSLT stylesheet

$ xsltproc [stylesheet.xsl] [input.xml]

Save output to a file

$ xsltproc -o [output.html] [stylesheet.xsl] [input.xml]

Pass a string parameter to the stylesheet

$ xsltproc --stringparam [name] "[value]" [stylesheet.xsl] [input.xml]

Pass an XPath expression as parameter

$ xsltproc --param [name] "[xpath]" [stylesheet.xsl] [input.xml]

Process XInclude elements in the input

$ xsltproc --xinclude [stylesheet.xsl] [input.xml]

Transform HTML input

$ xsltproc --html [stylesheet.xsl] [input.html]

Show timing information

$ xsltproc --timing [stylesheet.xsl] [input.xml]

Disable network access for external resources

$ xsltproc --nonet [stylesheet.xsl] [input.xml]

SYNOPSIS

xsltproc [options] [stylesheet] [xml-file]

xsltproc is a command-line XSLT processor for transforming XML documents using XSLT stylesheets. It is part of libxslt, the XSLT C library for GNOME, but operates independently of the GNOME desktop.
If the input XML document contains a stylesheet processing instruction, xsltproc can automatically use the referenced stylesheet without command-line specification.
The tool supports XSLT 1.0 and EXSLT extensions. Output can be XML, HTML, or text depending on the stylesheet's xsl:output directive.

PARAMETERS

-o, --output file

Write output to file instead of stdout.

--stringparam name value

Pass a string parameter to the stylesheet.

--param name value

Pass an XPath expression result as parameter.

--xinclude

Process XInclude elements before transformation.

--html

Treat input as HTML instead of XML.

--nonet

Disable network access (for DTDs, entities, stylesheets).

--novalid

Skip DTD validation of input document.

--noout

Suppress output of result.

--timing

Display timing for parsing and transformation.

--profile

Output profiling information for optimization.

--maxdepth value

Maximum template stack depth (default: 3000).

--nowrite

Refuse to write to any file.

--nomkdir

Refuse to create directories.

-v, --verbose

Output each step during processing.

-V, --version

Show libxml and libxslt versions.

CAVEATS

xsltproc only supports XSLT 1.0; XSLT 2.0 and 3.0 features are not available. For XSLT 2.0+, consider Saxon or other processors. Return codes indicate specific error types (4 = stylesheet parse error, 5 = stylesheet error, 6 = document error).

HISTORY

xsltproc was developed by Daniel Veillard as part of the libxslt library for the GNOME project, with the first release around 2001. It is built on libxml2 for XML parsing. The tool has become a standard for command-line XSLT processing on Unix-like systems and is included in most Linux distributions.