p:archive (3.1) 

The XML archive manifest document format

An archive manifest is an XML document that specifies files to process constructing the archive. It is also used as the result format of the p:archive-manifest step.

Its root element is <c:archive> (the c prefix here is bound to the http://www.w3.org/ns/xproc-step namespace):

<c:archive>
  ( <c:entry> |
    (any other element)
  )*
</c:archive>

A <c:entry> element describes a single entry (a file) in the archive:

<c:entry (any other attribute)
         href = xs:anyURI
         name = xs:string
         comment? = xs:string
         content-type? = xs:string
         level? = xs:string
         method? = xs:string >
  (any child element)*
</c:entry>

The p:archive algorithm

The p:archive step follows a, rather complicated, algorithm. It has two phases:

1 - Construct a complete manifest

First, the manifest (the document, if any, appearing on the manifest port) is checked and completed if necessary:

• If no document appears on the manifest port, an empty manifest is created.

• The base URIs of the documents appearing on the source port are compared against the list of base URIs in the manifest (the c:entry/@href values, made absolute). If there are documents on the source port that are not in the manifest, an entry (<c:entry> element) for this document is created:

  • The c:entry/@href attribute becomes the base URI of the document.

  • The c:entry/@name (which is the path/name of the entry in the archive) is computed against the value of the relative-to option:

    • If the base URI of the document starts with the value of the relative-to option, the c:entry/@name attribute value becomes the substring after this.

    • If the base URI of the document does not start with the value of the relative-to option, the c:entry/@name attribute value becomes the path of this base URI (without a leading /).

    For instance, assume the relative-to option is set to file:///some/path/. A document with base URI file:///some/path/etc/x.txt gets a c:entry/@name attribute value etc/x.txt. A document with base URI file:///someother/path/y.txt gets a c:entry/@name attribute value someother/path/y.txt.

The result of all this is that we now have a manifest that has entries (<c:entry> elements) for all documents appearing on the source port. It can also have entries for documents that are not on the source port: because such an entry was present in the initial manifest and no matching document on the source port was found for it.

2 - Process the manifest

The now completed manifest is processed. For every entry (<c:entry> element):

• If the value of the c:entry/@href attribute matches the base URI of one of the documents appearing on the source port, this document is added to the archive.

  When appropriate (for instance for XML documents), the value of its (optional) serialization document-property is used for serializing it (convert it to text format).

• For other entries, the value of the c:entry/@href attribute is used to load the file (for instance from disk if it starts with file:/) and add it to the archive.

  These documents are used “as is”: no parsing/serialization takes place.

In both cases, the value of the c:entry/@name attribute becomes the name/path of the entry in the archive. The values of the other attributes of the <c:entry> element might also get used, but this is dependent on the XProc processor used and/or the archive’s format.

The p:archive step is supposed to retain the order of the <c:entry> elements. This is, for instance, important when constructing an e-book in EPUB format: this has a non-compressed entry that must be first in the archive.

Handling of ZIP archives

When the value of the format option is absent or zip, the following applies:

• The values of the c:entry/@name attributes in the manifest must be relative paths (without a leading /).

• The archive port accepts zero or one ZIP archive. If this port is empty, an empty ZIP archive is used as its default value.

• The parameters option is a map that associates parameters (the keys in the map) with values. For ZIP archives, the following parameters can be used:

  Parameter	Description
  command	Specifies the operation to perform. It’s default value is update. See below for a description of the commands.
  level	For entries that have no c:entry/@level attribute specified, this is the default compression level for entries added or updated in the archive. For ZIP archives, its possible values are: smallest fastest default huffman none
  method	For entries that have no c:entry/@method attribute specified, this is the default compression method for entries added or updated in the archive. For ZIP archives, its possible values are: deflated none

  The command parameter can have one of the following values:

  Command	Description
  update (default)	The archive appearing on the archive port is updated: An entry in this ZIP archive that corresponds with a c:entry/@name attribute in the manifest gets updated as specified in the <c:entry> element. For other entries in the ZIP archive, first their name/path is made absolute using the base URI of the archive. If a file exists with that URI and is newer than the entry in the ZIP archive, it is updated. For all <c:entry> elements in the manifest that have no corresponding entry in the ZIP archive, the document gets added. Please note that when there is no document on the archive port, p:archive will always create a new, fresh, archive.
  create	This behaves like the update command except that timestamps are ignored and updates (if any) always take place.
  freshen	This behaves like the update command except that no new files will be added.
  delete	For the delete command a ZIP archive must be present on the archive port. It removes all entries in the ZIP archive that have a corresponding c:entry/@name attribute in the manifest. All other manifest entries are ignored.

Basic usage

In probably most cases, the p:archive step will be used to create an archive. If you have no special requirements this is easy: simply supply the documents for the archive on the step’s source port. The only thing you need to take into account is the name/path of the entries in the archive: for this the relative-to option is important.

Pipeline document:

<p:declare-step xmlns:p="http://www.w3.org/ns/xproc" version="3.0">

  <p:input port="source" sequence="true">
    <p:document href="in1.xml"/>
    <p:document href="test/in2.xml"/>
  </p:input>
  <p:output port="result"/>

  <p:variable name="relative-to" select="resolve-uri('.', static-base-uri())"/>

  <p:archive relative-to="{$relative-to}"/>

  <p:store href="tmp/result.zip"/>
  <p:archive-manifest relative-to="{$relative-to}"/>

</p:declare-step>

Result document:

<c:archive xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/ns/xproc-step">
   <c:entry name="in1.xml"
            content-type="application/xml"
            href="file:/…/…/in1.xml"
            method="deflated"
            size="91"
            compressed-size="80"
            time="2025-09-03T14:55:52+02:00"/>
   <c:entry name="test/in2.xml"
            content-type="application/xml"
            href="file:/…/…/test/in2.xml"
            method="deflated"
            size="98"
            compressed-size="84"
            time="2025-09-03T14:55:52+02:00"/>
</c:archive>

• The pipeline’s input consists of two documents, in1.xml and test/in2.xml. Note that (because the p:document/@href attributes have relative values) the paths to these documents are relative to the location of the pipeline itself.

• When we construct an archive we usually don’t want the full path of the files on disk in the archive also. In this case we choose to use their relative paths against the pipeline. To achieve this we need the path (directory) where the pipeline is stored. This is done with the expression resolve-uri('.', static-base-uri()) and stored in the relative-to variable.

• We then create the archive using p:archive. The two input documents appear on its source port. We do not provide a manifest on the manifest port, so one will get constructed automatically.

• The names of the entries in the resulting archive get constructed by “subtracting” the value of the relative-to option from the base URIs of the source documents. The results will be their relative names against the pipeline’s location.

• We store the resulting zip and, just to show you what’s inside, ask for an archive manifest using the p:archive-manifest step.

Using the report port

The p:archive step also has a report port that outputs the manifest of the resulting archive. So, building on the Basic usage example, we could also have shown what’s inside the created archive like this:

Pipeline document:

<p:declare-step xmlns:p="http://www.w3.org/ns/xproc" version="3.0">

  <p:input port="source" sequence="true">
    <p:document href="in1.xml"/>
    <p:document href="test/in2.xml"/>
  </p:input>
  <p:output port="result" pipe="report@create-archive"/>

  <p:variable name="relative-to" select="resolve-uri('.', static-base-uri())"/>

  <p:archive relative-to="{$relative-to}" name="create-archive"/>

  <p:store href="tmp/result.zip"/>

</p:declare-step>

Result document:

<c:archive xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/ns/xproc-step">
   <c:entry href="file:/…/…/in1.xml" name="in1.xml"/>
   <c:entry href="file:/…/…/test/in2.xml" name="test/in2.xml"/>
</c:archive>

Note that the information in the manifest is less than what p:archive-manifest produces. What exactly happens here is implementation-defined and therefore dependent on the XProc processor used.

Using a manifest

This example creates a manifest that references some additional file for the archive. Note that in the archive we give it a different name than its source using the c:entry/@name attribute. When the manifest is processed, p:archive notices that test/in2.xml is not on its source port and therefore loads it from disk.

Pipeline document:

<p:declare-step xmlns:p="http://www.w3.org/ns/xproc" version="3.0" name="example">

  <p:input port="source" href="in1.xml"/>
  <p:output port="result"/>

  <p:identity name="manifest">
    <p:with-input>
      <c:archive xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/ns/xproc-step">
        <c:entry name="test/extra.xml" href="test/in2.xml"/>
      </c:archive>
    </p:with-input>
  </p:identity>

  <p:variable name="relative-to" select="resolve-uri('.', static-base-uri())"/>
  <p:archive relative-to="{$relative-to}">
    <p:with-input pipe="source@example"/>
    <p:with-input port="manifest" pipe="result@manifest"/>
  </p:archive>

  <p:store href="tmp/result.zip"/>
  <p:archive-manifest relative-to="{$relative-to}"/>

</p:declare-step>

Result document:

<c:archive xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/ns/xproc-step">
   <c:entry name="test/extra.xml"
            content-type="application/xml"
            href="file:/…/…/test/extra.xml"
            method="deflated"
            size="62"
            compressed-size="49"
            time="2025-02-05T13:05:59+01:00"/>
   <c:entry name="in1.xml"
            content-type="application/xml"
            href="file:/…/…/in1.xml"
            method="deflated"
            size="91"
            compressed-size="80"
            time="2025-09-03T14:55:52+02:00"/>
</c:archive>