xml-c14n

Canonicalize XML documents (xmlstarlet c14n)

TLDR

Inclusive canonicalization with comments (W3C XML C14N 1.0)

$ xml c14n --with-comments [file.xml]

Inclusive canonicalization stripping comments

$ xml c14n --without-comments [file.xml]

Exclusive canonicalization with comments (XML EXC-C14N)

$ xml c14n --exc-with-comments [file.xml]

Exclusive canonicalization without comments

$ xml c14n --exc-without-comments [file.xml]

Canonicalize a subset selected by an XPath expression file

$ xml c14n --without-comments [file.xml] [xpath.xml]

Read from stdin

$ cat [file.xml] | xml c14n --with-comments -

SYNOPSIS

xml c14n mode xml-file [xpath-file] [inclusive-ns-list]

xml c14n is the canonicalization sub-command of xmlstarlet. It produces a byte-stable serialization of an XML document according to the W3C Canonical XML 1.0 or Exclusive XML Canonicalization 1.0 specifications. The result is what tools must compute before generating or verifying XML Digital Signatures (XML-DSig) so that semantically equivalent documents hash to the same value.Inclusive canonicalization includes ancestor namespace declarations; exclusive canonicalization (used by SAML, WS-Security, etc.) drops them unless explicitly listed in the inclusive namespace prefix list.

PARAMETERS

MODE (required, exactly one)

One of --with-comments, --without-comments, --exc-with-comments, --exc-without-comments.

XML-FILE

XML document to canonicalize. Use - to read stdin.

XPATH-FILE

Optional XML file whose root element's text content is an XPath expression that selects the node-set to canonicalize.

INCLUSIVE-NS-LIST

For exclusive C14N only: space-separated list of namespace prefixes to treat as inclusive (e.g. `'soap xsd'`).

INSTALL

sudo dnf install xmlstarlet

sudo pacman -S xmlstarlet

sudo apk add xmlstarlet

sudo zypper install xmlstarlet

brew install xmlstarlet

nix profile install nixpkgs#xmlstarlet

CAVEATS

The mode flag is positional — every invocation must supply exactly one of the four mode options before the input file. The XPath argument is itself an XML file containing an XPath, not a literal expression on the command line.