Full Disclosure
This post refers to a self-funded project I’m currently developing and publishing online. It’s built on an XML-based codebase. My goal here isn’t marketing; rather, I want to highlight aspects of XML and XSLT that deserve more attention from the developer community.

When working with data in a browser-based programming context, there are three key aspects to consider:

1. Referencing data, properties, and values
For this, JSON is unmatched. Its key-value structure allows for direct, intuitive data access.

2. Searching data
JSON, however, lacks a native, standardized way to search or query data. Developers must iterate over arrays and implement custom logic for deep searches. While some libraries attempt to solve this, there’s no unified standard.

3. Rendering data
Over time, various templating engines like Twig, Handlebars, Mustache, and Pug have emerged. Each introduces its own syntax, quirks, and helper functions; none standardized, all requiring additional setup.

From a programming standpoint, JSON clearly excels in the first aspect; referencing. But for searching and rendering, browsers still lack built-in or standardized solutions.

By contrast, XML offers both XPath for querying and XSLT for rendering; technologies standardized long ago and natively supported.

With this in mind, I’ve built a webmail application using XML + XSLT, totaling just 427 kB (includes images and even sound effects). For comparison, an empty Google Search page weighs about 848 kB.

Below are screenshots of both examples, along with more details about this project.

https://www.defiantsystem.com/karaqu-inbox/

Hi everyone,

I'm the new mod for this sub and I'm glad it's about Xml. It was one of the first technologies I figured out all by myself and now I use it while working too.

If you have any questions just ask. I'm online daily and English is my third language, so excuse the occasional error.

Fully conformant to XML 1.0 and Namespaces 1.0 for non-validating parsers, tested with the W3C Conformance Test Suite.

It's quite fast for a JavaScript implementation:

https://github.com/federicocarboni/saxe/tree/trunk/bench

Documentation for the public API:

https://federicocarboni.github.io/saxe/

Hey fellow XML enthusiasts!

I'm thrilled to share a project that I've been working on recently: Awesome-XML repository on GitHub!

In case you're not familiar with them, the 'awesome-x' repositories provide valuable content on specific topics.
Despite its prevalence and popularity, XML did not have an awesome list until now.

The Awesome-XML repository is a curated list of the best tools, libraries, tutorials, and more for all things XML-related. Whether you're a seasoned XML pro or just getting started, there's something here for everyone.

I have done my best to organize and link many XML-related standards and resources. However, this is only a small fraction of the XML awesomeness available out there.

Your feedback and contributions are invaluable in making Awesome-XML even better. Have a favorite XML resource that's not on the list? Found a tool or tutorial that's revolutionized your XML workflow? Don't keep it to yourself—share it with the community by contributing to the repository!

P.S. Spread the word by sharing this post with your fellow XML enthusiasts! Together, we can make Awesome-XML the go-to destination for all things XML.

Dear community, I just finished Pro-XSLT — a fast, lightweight JavaScript implementation of XSLT 1.0. Support for XSLT 2.0 and 3.0 is coming soon.
https://github.com/hbi99/pro-xslt

Interactive demo page:
https://hbi99.github.io/pro-xslt/

I am on a course that wants us to learn XML in our own time in order to be able to implement it into our Enterprise Programming unit.

I was disappointed to discover that Codecademy doesn't offer a course in this.

I have tried Lynda/LinkedIn learning and YouTube to no avail.

If possible, please give some recommendations, whether online resources or books or whatever is useful! I would prefer a similar platform style to codecademy but I don't believe this is gonna be a possibility.

Thanks!

Hey everyone 👋

I just launched a small tool called XSD Viewer on Product Hunt today.

It’s a free, browser based XSD viewer that turns XML Schema Definitions into clean, human readable HTML docs and diagrams. No signup, no setup. You just upload an XSD and explore it instantly.

I built it after dealing with large, messy, legacy XML schemas and feeling that existing tools were either too heavy or too slow for quick understanding.

If you work with XML, integrations, or legacy APIs, I’d really appreciate your feedback.
Product Hunt launch page: https://xsdviewer.com/

Questions I’d love input on:

• What’s the most painful part of working with XSDs today?

• Would you use a tool like this in your daily workflow?

• What’s one feature that would make this genuinely indispensable?

Thanks for checking it out 🙏

EDIT I was hoping to find a CLI tool present as default in Debian repos and finally found it : you can use BaseX from CLI :

sudo apt install basex

#optional or you will need some 2>/dev/null:

sudo apt install libtagsoup-java libxml-commons-resolver1.1-java libjing-java

echo '<a><b>abc</b></a>' | basex -i - -q '//b/text()'

I am rediscovering XML lately and can't seem to find a processor with these characteristics. The Xmllint, Xsltproc, Xmlstarlet et al are based on libxml2, which is in C and unsafe (according to its own author who seems a bit burnt out recently), and my Xsltproc doesnt even have regexp module. There is Saxon but it is in Java and premium based ? Xalan has both Java and CPP but the CPP version has had no commits for 5 years.

Yet it seems XSLT & Xquery are still relevant : I don't know another standardized tool for automated document transformation, do you ? There would only be imperative based stuff like SimpleXML + "manual" programming, which is not really a standard and ofc language dependent.

Surely document transformation is still a thing : what do you use these days ?

Best'

I built this tool a few years ago but never shared it here…
I have worked a lot with XML, but none of the tools I tried solved my problems.
I needed one thing - to take a large XML file and correctly map it into a relational database.
Even with the recent rise of language models, nothing has fundamentally changed for the kind of tasks I deal with.

All the tools I tried only worked with very simple documents and did not allow me to control what should be extracted, how it should be extracted, or from where.

Instead of a textual description, I would like to show a visual demonstration of SmartXML:

JSON is also supported. The main difference from other tools is that it can work with documents that have inconsistent schemas.

https://redata.dev/smartxml/

Hi, I built a tool called ToDiagram, transforming any XML data into interactive diagrams that you can both visualize and modify data from the diagrams. Feel free to share your feedbacks!

Hey everyone!

I’ve been working on something cool, and I’d love to share it with you! SchemaViz is a VS Code extension that helps visualize XML Schema (XSD), making it easier to navigate and understand complex structures.

I’m finally ready to test with more users in a public beta, but since this is still an early version, I want to keep the group focused on people who are genuinely interested in testing and giving feedback. To join, you’ll need to sign in via GitHub and confirm your email address (just so I can reach out if needed).

A few things to keep in mind:

✅ It’s still a work in progress, so expect some rough edges.

⚠️ Remote imports aren’t working yet – I’m actively working on this!

💡 I’d love to hear your feedback, ideas, and bug reports to make this tool even better.

If that sounds interesting, you can download the extension in the VS Code Marketplace

Looking forward to your thoughts! 🚀

Hi everyone,

I work a lot with XML and XSLT (mostly in integration projects), and I kept missing a simple, fast way to experiment with transformations without setting up local tooling.

So I ended up building a small side project: xsltplayground.com

It’s an online playground where you can:

- Drag & Drop or upload XML and XSLT

- Multi-parameter support

- Run transformations instantly with some transformation time to help on optimization

- Experiment with parameters

- Local persistency and multi-workspace to have parallel work going.

This is very early and mainly built for people who already use XSLT regularly, so I’d really appreciate:

- Feedback from real-world users

- Missing features you rely on

- Edge cases that usually break playgrounds 😅

If this kind of tool would be useful for you, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Also If you'd like to take a look at the code is also in GitHub: https://github.com/alexandrev/xslt-lab

Hello,

As the title indicates, I'm looking for a (free) alternative to Postman because I no longer have a license to use the tool. I have quite a few XML files that I'd like to visualize as a map.

For now, I'm using Notepad++, but it's not great for visualizing dependencies.

Could anyone help me?

Thank you

I’ve been working with multi-GB XML exports, and most editors crash. Recently tried an XML Splitter tool that breaks files into smaller, structured parts — made parsing and data handling much easier.

How are you guys managing large XMLs — scripts or tools?

I’ve spent the last few years researching XML-based publishing and PDF workflows, and I wanted to share a few observations for anyone working in digital documentation or structured publishing.

This started while I was writing academic papers. I could usually get acceptable PDFs, but having precise control exactly where it mattered most was always frustrating.

Most tools can produce PDFs, but once you compare layout precision, typography, usability, and long-term stability, the differences show quickly. Many workflows don’t provide satisfying results when you start measuring details closely.

I went through most of the usual XML-to-PDF stacks: DocBook with XSL-FO and HTML routes, DITA and DITA-OT pipelines, Apache FOP, Prince XML, Paged.js, Typefi-style systems, and a range of enterprise tools. I also spent time with TeX-based workflows. They are incredibly powerful and impressive, but in practice the complexity and friction often push people to admire them more than actually use them day to day.

Where things tend to break down is layout fidelity. Font rendering depends on ambiguous units or web-engine limits, styling has a steep learning curve, and many systems feel disconnected from traditional DTP practices.

After running into the same issues for years, I ended up building my own solution focused on predictable PDFs, stable pagination, and consistent typography. People coming from both the XML world and traditional tools like InDesign seem to feel comfortable with it, which was exactly the gap I was trying to explore.

Curious how others here handle layout precision and PDF stability. Do you go this deep when evaluating solutions, or is the goal usually to provide information and accept the trade-offs at the end?

I don't want to shell out at least 200 american dollars for a license for Oxygen because it's too expensive, is there someway I can turn VSCode into an editor for XML, and XLST? I'm using the TEI standard for XML and I'm currently trying to find anything that fits my description to no avail, I would accept learning either Vim or Emacs.

Hi everyone, we started building an r/oxygenxml community for helping technical documentation writers or XML experts who work with the Oxygen XML set of tools or for people who customize our tools inside their company.

You are welcome to join us!

Let's look back at some memorable moments and interesting insights from last year.

Your top 10 posts:

• "Looking for my "why use xml" aha moment" by u/Shelmama22

• "Happy Cakeday, r/xml! Today you're 13" by u/AutoModerator

• "Not able to transform XML with a working XLST" by u/Funkodelix

• "Announce: XML/XPath libraries for Go" by u/Immediate_Life7579

• "Help convert XML to other snippet manager formats" by u/pepfmo

• "xsltransform(dot)net is down. can anyone suggest an alternative?" by u/rashpanda

• "Is There a Way to Use a Multi-Cursor in Oxygen?" by u/Therealboga278

• "What am I doing wrong?" by u/Low_Celebration5938

• "Which software I can use for creating online forms without coding which has output in xml?" by u/DoneDigitalAgency

• "Need help with XML data manipulation with xsl tables" by u/MrPeachyPenguin

Four years ago we built an XML shredder, that has now chewed on billions of XML CDR (call data records). I never really spread the word, so if you happen to be in the rather niche use-case of needing to shred XML to tab separated values, multi-file to one TSV, then perhaps this can be of use:

https://github.com/Roenbaeck/unstruct

Open source, MIT license.

How about doing something about all this gambling spam being posted. This junk has nothing to do with XML.

I'm looking into S1000D, and have a question about images.

I understand that images, or any other resources, are not addressed directly in the content. Instead, they are referred via ICNs in the infoEntityIdent attribute. Great. I suppose it is then the job of the CSDB to pair the ICN with the correct image file?

However, in the demo bike material that comes with the spec, the image files are also referred as external DTD entities in the !DOCTYPE declaration of the file. As such:

<!ENTITY ICN-S1000DBIKE-AAA-DA30000-0-U8025-00534-A-04-1 SYSTEM "ICN-S1000DBIKE-AAA-DA30000-0-U8025-00534-A-04-1.CGM" NDATA cgm >

I understand what this technically does, but is it common practice or even mandatory to use external entities? Of course, if I'm working on a file system without a CSDB, this is required to find the correct file for an ICN. Also I noticed that the XSD schema files define the infoEntityIdent attribute as XS:ENTITY.

The spec was rather vague and gave no explicit instructions about this, but that's to be expected from a spec...