The Saxon configuration file

Configuration parameters for Saxon can be defined in a configuration file. This file is optional. It can be applied by using the option -config:filename on the Transform, Query, or Validate command line, or using the factory method Configuration.readConfiguration().

A schema config.xsd for the configuration file, as well as example configuration files, are provided as in the samples/config directory of the saxon-resources download.

In both the s9api interface on Java, and the Saxon.Api interface on .NET, there is a constructor on the Processor class that takes a configuration file as input.

Here is an example configuration file. It is designed to show as many options as possible; in practice, no option needs to be included if it is to take its default value, and it is probably good practice to only include those parameters that you need to specify explicitly. Some of the example values used in this sample will not work unless you have files with the relevant names at particular locations, or unless you have classes with particular names available on your classpath; if such entries cause problems, you can always delete them.

<configuration xmlns="http://saxon.sf.net/ns/configuration" edition="EE" licenseFileLocation="saxon-license.lic" label="Some label"> <global allowExternalFunctions="true" allowMultiThreading="true" allowOldJavaUriFormat="false" collationUriResolver="net.sf.saxon.lib.StandardCollationURIResolver" collectionUriResolver="net.sf.saxon.lib.StandardCollectionURIResolver" compileWithTracing="false" defaultCollation="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions/collation/codepoint" defaultCollection="file:///e:/temp" dtdValidation="false" dtdValidationRecoverable="true" errorListener="net.sf.saxon.lib.StandardErrorListener" expandAttributeDefaults="true" lazyConstructionMode="false" lineNumbering="true" optimizationLevel="10" preEvaluateDoc="false" preferJaxpParser="true" recognizeUriQueryParameters="true" schemaValidation="strict" serializerFactory="" sourceResolver="" stripSpace="all" styleParser="" timing="false" traceExternalFunctions="true" traceListener="net.sf.saxon.trace.XSLTTraceListener" traceOptimizerDecisions="false" treeModel="tinyTreeCondensed" uriResolver="net.sf.saxon.lib.StandardURIResolver" usePiDisableOutputEscaping="false" useTypedValueCache="true" validationComments="false" validationWarnings="true" versionOfXml="1.0" xInclude="false" /> <xslt initialMode="" initialTemplate="" messageEmitter="" outputUriResolver="" recoveryPolicy="recoverWithWarnings" schemaAware="false" staticErrorListener="" staticUriResolver="" styleParser="" version="3.0" versionWarning="false"> <extensionElement namespace="http://saxon.sf.net/sql" factory="net.sf.saxon.option.sql.SQLElementFactory"/> <patternOptimization dita="false" index.comparison.predicates="false" index.minUses="6" index.rules="false" optimize="true" preconditions="false" precondition.minUses="2"> <index pattern="*[contains(@att,$s]" when="starts-with(.,' ') and ends-with(.,' ')" index.expr="tokenize(@att)" index.value="replace($s,'\s','')" mode="#all"/> <precondition pattern="*[contains(@att,$s]" when="starts-with(.,' ') and ends-with(.,' ')])" to="contains(@att,substring($s,1,2))" mode="#all"/> </patternOptimization> </xslt> <xquery allowUpdate="true" constructionMode="preserve" defaultElementNamespace="" defaultFunctionNamespace="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions" emptyLeast="true" inheritNamespaces="true" moduleUriResolver="net.sf.saxon.lib.StandardModuleURIResolver" preserveBoundarySpace="false" preserveNamespaces="true" requiredContextItemType="document-node()" schemaAware="false" staticErrorListener="" version="3.0" /> <xsd occurrenceLimits="100,250" schemaUriResolver="com.saxonica.config.ee.StandardSchemaResolver" useXsiSchemaLocation="false" version="1.1" /> <serialization method="xml" indent="yes" saxon:indent-spaces="8" xmlns:saxon="http://saxon.sf.net/"/> <localizations defaultLanguage="en" defaultCountry="US"> <localization lang="da" class="net.sf.saxon.option.local.Numberer_da"/> <localization lang="de" class="net.sf.saxon.option.local.Numberer_de"/> </localizations> <resources> <externalObjectModel>net.sf.saxon.option.xom.XOMObjectModel</externalObjectModel> <extensionFunction>s9apitest.TestIntegrationFunctions$SqrtFunction</extensionFunction> <fileExtension extension="xq" mediaType="text/plain"/> <schemaDocument>file:///c:/MyJava/samples/data/books.xsd</schemaDocument> <schemaComponentModel/> </resources> <collations> <collation uri="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions/collation/codepoint" class="net.sf.saxon.expr.sort.CodepointCollator"/> <collation uri="http://www.microsoft.com/collation/caseblind" class="net.sf.saxon.expr.sort.CodepointCollator"/> <collation uri="http://example.com/french" lang="fr" ignore-case="yes"/> </collations> </configuration>

The configuration element takes three possible attributes:

edition, whose value indicates the Saxon edition in use: HE (home edition), PE (professional edition), or EE (enterprise edition). The default value is HE. If PE or EE is specified, then the appropriate license file must be installed.
licenseFileLocation, a URI identifying the location of the license file. This may be an absolute URI, or it may be relative to the base URI of the configuration file; it must use the file URI scheme. If the attribute is absent, then Saxon will search for a license file using the installed software location and the classpath in the usual way. For example, if the license file is in the same directory as the configuration file, specify licenseFileLocation="saxon-license.lic".
label, being a label string that may be used to identify the configuration. Within the implementation the value of this label may be retrieved using net.sf.saxon.Configuration.getLabel() . The default is null.

The children of the configuration element may appear in any order.

The contents of the different sections of the configuration file are described in the following subsections.