xlpath¶

xlpath is a CLI to query the XML within XLSX files using XPath.

Excel files are just XML in a trench coat. Beneath the .xlsx extension lies a zip archive containing a collection of XML files. xlpath lets you run XPath expressions against that XML, querying the files within an XLSX archive directly. The output format follows a grep-like pattern by default (file:part: value), so it's a natural fit for standard shell tools.

Here's how to get the names of all sheets in a file named Book1.xlsx:

xlpath '//x:sheet/@name' Book1.xlsx

This would output:

Book1.xlsx:xl/workbook.xml: Sheet1
Book1.xlsx:xl/workbook.xml: Sheet2
Book1.xlsx:xl/workbook.xml: Sheet3

See the usage reference and examples to see what else is possible.

Install¶

You can install xlpath from the GitHub repository with Cargo, the Rust package manager:

cargo install --git https://github.com/flother/xlpath

Or clone and build from source:

git clone https://github.com/flother/xlpath
cd xlpath
cargo install --path .

Licence¶

xlpath is licensed under either the MIT licence or Apache licence 2.0.