Install xq XML and HTML Processor on Ubuntu 26.04

The xq is a command-line tool designed for working with XML and HTML documents. It supports querying document structures, selecting specific elements, and extracting values directly from the terminal. This tutorial demonstrates how to install xq XML and HTML processor on Ubuntu 26.04.

Install xq

Fetch the latest xq release version from GitHub and store it in a variable:

XQ_VERSION=$(curl -s "https://api.github.com/repos/sibprogrammer/xq/releases/latest" | grep -Po '"tag_name": "v\K[0-9.]+')

Download the latest release archive and unpack the xq binary into /usr/local/bin:

curl -sSL https://github.com/sibprogrammer/xq/releases/latest/download/xq_${XQ_VERSION}_linux_amd64.tar.gz \
  | sudo tar xz -C /usr/local/bin xq

After the installation, verify that the xq binary is available by checking its version:

xq --version

Testing xq

For a simple example, create an XML document named test.xml:

nano test.xml

Add the following content:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<people>
  <person>
    <name>John</name>
    <age>25</age>
  </person>
  <person>
    <name>James</name>
    <age>29</age>
  </person>
</people>

The xq can use XPath expressions to locate particular nodes within an XML document. The following example selects the name element belonging to the second person entry:

xq -x '/people/person[2]/name' test.xml

Output:

James

Uninstall xq

When xq is no longer required, delete its binary from the system:

sudo rm -rf /usr/local/bin/xq