GOBL.CII
February 4, 2026 ยท View on GitHub
GOBL conversion into Cross Industry Invoice (CII) XML format and vice versa.
Copyright Invopop Ltd. 2025. Released publicly under the Apache License Version 2.0. For commercial licenses, please contact the dev team at invopop. To accept contributions to this library, we require transferring copyrights to Invopop Ltd.
Usage
Go Package
Usage of the GOBL to CII conversion library is straightforward and supports two key actions
-
Conversion of GOBL to CII XML: You must first have a GOBL Envelope, including an invoice, ready to convert. There are some samples in the
test/datadirectory. -
Parsing of CII XML to GOBL: You need to have a valid CII XML document that you want to convert to GOBL format.
Both conversion directions are supported, allowing you to seamlessly transform between GOBL and CII XML formats as needed.
Converting GOBL to CII Invoice
package main
import (
"os"
"github.com/invopop/gobl"
cii "github.com/invopop/gobl.cii"
)
func main() {
data, _ := os.ReadFile("./test/data/invoice-sample.json")
env := new(gobl.Envelope)
if err := json.Unmarshal(data, env); err != nil {
panic(err)
}
// Prepare the CII document
doc, err := cii.ConvertInvoice(env)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
// Create the XML output
out, err := doc.Bytes()
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
}
Contexts are supported to include specific Guideline and Business rules. Available contexts include:
ContextEN16931V2017(default)ContextPeppolV3ContextFacturXV1ContextXRechnungV3ContextZUGFeRDV2ContextChorusProV1ContextPeppolFranceFacturXV1ContextPeppolFranceCIUSV1ContextPeppolFranceExtendedV1
Example:
doc, err := cii.ConvertInvoice(env, cii.WithContext(cii.ContextXRechnungV3))
Parsing CII Invoice into GOBL
package main
import (
"io"
cii "github.com/invopop/gobl.cii"
)
func main() {
// Read the CII XML file
data, err := io.ReadAll("path/to/cii_invoice.xml")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
env, err := cii.Parse(data)
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
out, err = json.MarshalIndent(env, "", " ")
if err != nil {
panic(err)
}
}
Command Line
The GOBL to CII tool includes a command-line helper. You can install it manually in your Go environment with:
go install ./cmd/gobl.cii
Usage:
gobl.cii convert <input> <output> [--context <format>]
The tool automatically detects the input file type (JSON/XML) and performs the appropriate conversion. Optionally specify a context format:
gobl.cii convert invoice.json invoice.xml --context xrechnung
Testing
Run tests with:
go test ./...
To update test fixtures:
go test ./... -update
To validate XML output using Phive:
go test ./... -validate
Validation requires a running Phive service on 127.0.0.1:9091
Considerations
There are certain assumptions and lost information in the conversion from CII to GOBL that should be considered:
- GOBL does not currently support additional embedded documents, so the AdditionalReferencedDocument field (BG-24 in EN 16931) is not supported and lost in the conversion.
- Payment advances do not include their own tax rate, they use the global tax rate of the invoice.
- The fields ReceivableSpecifiedTradeAccountingAccount (BT-133) and DesignatedProductClassification (BT-158) are added as a note to the line, with the type code as the key.
Development
The main source of information for this project comes from the EN 16931 standard, developed by the EU for electronic invoicing. Part 1 of the standard defines the semantic data model that forms an invoice, but does not provide a concrete implementation. Part 3.3 defines the mappings from the semantic data model to the CII XML format covered in this repository.
Useful links: