ValidateFile(3pm)

💖 NAME 💖

XMLTV::ValidateFile — bestie, this is the little Perl library that validates an XMLTV file. It lives in the User Contributed Perl Documentation corner of ValidateFile(3pm) and it is lowkey a vibe check for your XML. ✨

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🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

It's a utility library. What does it do? It validates that a file is correct according to http://wiki.xmltv.org/index.php/XMLTVFormat. That's it, that's the whole job, and it does it so well. 💅

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🎀 EXPORTED FUNCTIONS 🎀

Okay so listen. All these functions are exported on demand. Not automatic, not by default — on demand, bestie.

LoadDtd 🦋

Loads the xmltv dtd. Takes a single parameter, which is the name of the xmltv dtd file.

🚨 REAL TALK: LoadDtd must be called before ValidateFile can be called. No shortcuts, no skipping. It's giving prerequisites, periodt.

ValidateFile 👑

Validates that a file is valid according to the XMLTV dtd, and also tries to check that it contains valid information. ValidateFile takes a filename as parameter, and optionally also a day and an offset, and prints error messages to STDERR.

ValidateFile returns a list of errors that it found with the file. Each error takes the form of a keyword:

ValidateFile checks the following:

• notwell — the file is not well-formed XML. 😭
• notvalid — the file does not follow the XMLTV DTD. 🚫
• invalidid — an xmltvid does not look like a proper id, i.e. it does not match /^[-a-zA-Z0-9]+(\.[-a-zA-Z0-9]+)+$/.
• duplicateid — more than one channel-entry found for a channelid. Not the main character behaviour we're looking for. 💀
• unknownid — no channel-entry found for a channelid that is used in a programme-entry.
• noprogrammes — no programme entries were found in the file. Empty file era, and not in a cute way. 🙈
• emptytitle — a programme entry with an empty or missing title was found.
• emptydescription — a programme entry with an empty desc-element was found. The desc-element shall be omitted if there is no description. (So like, just leave it out, bestie.)
• badstart — a programme entry with an invalid start-time was found. ⏰
• badstop — a programme entry with an invalid stop-time was found. ⏰
• badepisode — a programme entry with an invalid episode number was found.
• missingtimezone — the start/stop time for a programme entry does not include a timezone. Where are you, timezone?? 🌍
• invalidtimezone — the start/stop time for a programme entry contains an invalid timezone.
• badiso8859 — the file is encoded in iso-8859 but contains characters that have no meaning in iso-8859 (or are control characters). If it's iso-8859-1 (aka Latin 1) it might be some characters in windows-1252 encoding.
• badutf8 — the file is encoded in utf-8 but contains characters that look strange:
  1. Mis-encoded single characters represented with [EF][BF][BD] bytes
  2. Mis-encoded single characters represented with [C3][AF][C2][BF][C2][BD] bytes
  3. Mis-encoded single characters in range [C2][80-9F]
• badentity — the file contains one or more undefined XML entities. 🔥

If no errors are found, an empty list is returned. (Yes, an empty list. That's the slay outcome. 🎉)

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😭 BUGS 😭

It is currently necessary to specify the path to the xmltv dtd-file. This should not be necessary. We know. We're all thinking it. 👀

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💜 COPYRIGHT 💜

Copyright (C) 2006 Mattias Holmlund. Respect the icon. 🫶

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.

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✨ and that's the whole page, bestie ✨

This one's from perl v5.40.1, dated 2025-04-19 — no cap, that's literally the version and the date at the bottom of the page. Mwah. 💋🎀