A small object-oriented Swift API around libxml2.

SwiftLibXML wraps libxml2 pointers in Swift value and reference types that make common parsing, traversal, attribute lookup, namespace handling, and XPath queries straightforward on macOS, Linux, and Windows.

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 = """
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<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)
        }
    }
}

• 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.

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

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

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

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

brew update
brew install libxml2

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

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.

Build the package with:

swift build

Run the test suite with:

swift test

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.