XMLINT

XMLINT checks that a given XML file is well formed. It uses the XML Document Object Model (DOM) to check that the document is also valid according to a Document Type Definition (DTD) or XML-Data Schema. It also supports wild cards for validating a whole directory of files.

Usage: xmlint [options] filename(s)

Possible options are:

For example, to check that all files in a the d:\samples directory are valid:

xmlint d:\samples\*.xml

Or to check only well-formedness on all .xml files in the d:\samples directory and all .xml files that start with "M" in the c:\temp directory:

xmlint -w d:\samples\*.xml c:\temp\m*.xml

Return Codes: xmlint returns an error code equal to the number of files that failed. This was you can write command scripts that respond to failures as follows:

xmlint d:\samples\*.xml 
if errorlevel 1 goto failures

Output: The tool also now gives you nice error output showing you exactly what is wrong with your XML file as follows:

A string literal was expected, but no opening quote character was found.
URL: file:///d:/samples/msdn.xml
Line 00003: <NextCollectionId value=3/>
Pos  00025: ------------------------^

Installation

Download the xmlint.zip file which contains the source code and executable and launch from a DOS command prompt, pointing to one or more XML files to parse.

xmlint d:\samples\*.xml