rhx/swiftlibxml

Quick Start

Add SwiftLibXML to your package:

.package(url: "https://github.com/rhx/SwiftLibXML.git", from: "3.0.0")

Then import the module, parse a document, and run an XPath query:

import Foundation
import SwiftLibXML

let xml = """

<greeting language="en">Hello</greeting>
"""

if let document = XMLDocument(data: Data(xml.utf8)) {
    let root = document.rootElement
    print(root.name)                         // greeting
    print(root.content)                      // Hello
    print(root.attribute(named: "language")) // Optional("en")
    if let matches = document.xpath("//greeting") {
        for element in matches {
            print(element.qualifiedName)
        }
    }
}

Features

• Parse XML or HTML from memory or from a file.
• Traverse parents, siblings, children, descendants, attributes, and namespaces.
• Query documents with XPath.
• Keep libxml2 interop explicit without forcing callers to manage raw pointers.

Requirements

• Swift 5.6 or newer.
• libxml2 development headers and libraries.

Prerequisites

Swift

To build, you need at least Swift 5.6. Download Swift from https://swift.org/download/ and, on macOS, make sure the command line tools are installed as well. Test that your compiler works using swift --version, which should give you something like

$ swift --version swift-driver version: 1.127.15 Apple Swift version 6.2.4 (swiftlang-6.2.4.1.4 clang-1700.6.4.2) Target: arm64-apple-macosx26.0

on macOS, or on Linux you should get something like:

$ swift --version Swift version 6.1 (swift-6.1-RELEASE) Target: x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu

libxml2

Linux

On Ubuntu 16.04, 18.04, 20.04, 22.04, and 24.04, you can use the libxml2 that comes with the distribution. Just install with the apt package manager:

sudo apt update sudo apt install libxml2-dev

macOS

On macOS, you can install libxml2 using Homebrew (for setup instructions, see http://brew.sh):

brew update brew install libxml2

Windows

On Windows, install libxml2 via MSYS2. Open an MSYS2 MINGW64 shell and run:

pacman -S mingw-w64-x86_64-libxml2

Then, before building with Swift, set the following environment variables so that Package.swift can locate the headers and library:

set LIBXML_INCLUDE_PATH=C:\msys64\mingw64\include set LIBXML_LIBRARY_PATH=C:\msys64\mingw64\lib set PATH=C:\msys64\mingw64\bin;%PATH%

Swift's linker (lld-link) requires an MSVC-compatible import library (xml2.lib). MSYS2 ships a GNU-format import library (libxml2.dll.a) that lld can read directly; copy it once:

copy C:\msys64\mingw64\lib\libxml2.dll.a C:\msys64\mingw64\lib\xml2.lib

Then build and test as usual:

swift build swift test

Windows dependency caveat

On Windows, Package.swift builds CLibXML2 as a regular Swift target using unsafeFlags (because SPM's systemLibrary/pkgConfig mechanism does not interoperate with MSYS2's pkgconf).

Consequence: SPM refuses to fetch a package that uses unsafeFlags as a remote (URL-based) dependency. If you want to use SwiftLibXML on Windows you must reference it as a local (path-based) dependency in your Package.swift:

// ✅ Works on Windows
.package(path: "../SwiftLibXML")

// ❌ Does NOT work on Windows (SPM rejects unsafeFlags in remote packages)
.package(url: "https://github.com/rhx/SwiftLibXML.git", from: "…")

This restriction applies to Windows only; macOS and Linux consumers can use the normal remote-package dependency.

Building

Build the package with:

swift build

Run the test suite with:

swift test

Generating Documentation

With Swift 6.2 or newer, the package includes the swift-docc-static command plugin dependency. Generate static documentation with:

swift package generate-static-documentation --output /tmp/swiftlibxml-docs

The generated site can then be opened directly from the filesystem, for example at /tmp/swiftlibxml-docs/documentation/swiftlibxml/index.html.

Package Metadata

Repository: rhx/swiftlibxml

Default branch: main

README: README.md