fn:parse-xml

This function takes as input an XML document represented as a string, and returns the document node at the root of an XDM tree representing the parsed document.

parse-xml($arg as xs:string?) ➔ document-node(element(*))

Namespace

http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions

Links to W3C specifications

XPath 3.1 Functions and Operators

Saxon availability

Available in XPath 3.0, XSLT 3.0, XQuery 3.0, and later versions. From Saxon 9.6, available in all editions.

Notes on the Saxon implementation

Available since Saxon 9.3, provided XPath 3.0 is enabled; replaces the extension function saxon:parse which is retained for the time being.

Saxon parses the supplied document using the "source parser" registered with the configuration. It sets a custom ErrorHandler to be notified of parsing errors; this outputs nothing, but instead captures any notified exceptions. If the parsing failure is caught using try/catch, these exceptions are available as the value of $err:value: specifically, $err:value is a sequence of items, each of which is a Java ExternalObject wrapping a SAXParseException, which can be interrogated using reflexive extension functions to obtain details such as the line number of the error.