XML Metadata Validator: The Tool I Use Every Single Day
Some tools you build for users. This one I built for myself — and ended up using it more than any other tool on the platform.
The XML Metadata Validator came out of a very specific problem I faced repeatedly: I'd generate XML files from a template system, and weeks later discover the metadata fields were wrong — wrong language codes, missing required attributes, dates in the wrong format.
By the time the error was discovered, the files had already moved downstream. Fixing them meant tracking down every file, manually correcting the metadata, and re-running the entire pipeline. Hours lost.
The validator checks every metadata field against a set of rules you define. Is the language code a valid ISO 639 code? Is the date in YYYY-MM-DD format? Is the product ID matching the expected pattern? Are all required fields present?
The feature I'm most proud of: batch validation. Drag in a folder of 200 XML files, get a report showing every file that has issues, with the exact field and line number. No more manually opening files one by one.
I use this tool before every major delivery. It has caught errors that would have been embarrassing and time-consuming to fix. If I'm honest, this tool alone has saved me more hours than everything else I've built combined.