xq

xq

pretty-print and query XML and HTML

curl -fsSL https://unflab.app/get | sh -s -- xq

Installs to ~/.local/bin. Add --prefix /usr/local/bin to
put it somewhere else, or --uninstall to remove it.

Why it’s here

No dependency problem to solve — it’s here so it installs the same way as everything else.

Details

Built from that exact tarball, with its SHA-256 pinned in the
recipe. The binary links against nothing outside /usr/lib
and /System/, checked in CI before release.

xq pretty-prints XML and HTML with syntax colouring, and pulls content
out of them using XPath or CSS selectors. It works on messy real-world
HTML as well as well-formed XML.

xq feed.xml                             # indent and colour
curl -s https://example.com | xq -m     # the same for HTML
xq -x '//item/title' feed.xml           # XPath
xq -q 'a.nav' -a href page.html         # CSS selector, one attribute
xq -j config.xml                        # XML to JSON
xq -i messy.xml                         # reformat in place

man xq has the full set of options.

xq, yq, jq and xmlstarlet

These tools overlap:

• xq is for reading XML and HTML: looking at a document, or
  pulling values out of it. It’s the only one of these tools that
  handles HTML or CSS selectors.
• xmlstarlet also does XPath, and it’s the one to use for changing
  XML: editing nodes, validation, XSLT.
• yq -p xml turns XML into a tree you can query and convert with
  yq’s jq-style language.
• jq takes the output of xq -j if you’d rather work in JSON.

This is sibprogrammer’s Go xq, the one Homebrew installs. The Python
yq package (kislyuk/yq) has an unrelated xq of its own, which is a
jq wrapper for XML. That one isn’t shipped here.

Install

./install.sh                      # into ~/.local/bin
./install.sh --prefix /usr/local/bin
./install.sh --uninstall

Configuration

xq works with no configuration. It reads defaults for its flags
(indentation, colour, HTML mode, and so on) from ~/.xq if that file
exists; nothing is written there. Long output goes through $XQ_PAGER,
or $PAGER if that isn’t set. Set either one to an empty value to turn
paging off.

Shell completions

Completions for zsh, bash and fish are installed to each shell’s
conventional directory. Nothing is sourced and no rc file is edited:

• bash: ~/.local/share/bash-completion/completions, found
  automatically by bash-completion 2.x.

• fish: ~/.local/share/fish/vendor_completions.d, found
  automatically.

• zsh: ~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions, which is not in the
  default fpath. Add it in ~/.zshrc, above the line that runs
  compinit:

  fpath=(~/.local/share/zsh/site-functions $fpath)
  autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
  

About this build

A single static binary built with CGO_ENABLED=0, so it links against
nothing but libSystem.

Upstream publishes prebuilt macOS binaries too. This package exists so
xq installs the same way as everything else here, not because it was
hard to get.

Upstream

• Source: https://github.com/sibprogrammer/xq
• Version: 1.5.1
• Licence: MIT (see LICENSE)

xq is Alexey Yuzhakov’s work. unflab only compiles and packages it.