XML Formatter

Paste XML in the left box, or press Open file, and the formatted result appears on the right as you type. If the XML has a mistake, you see the line, the column and a small marker under the spot instead. Above the boxes, a green Well-formed XML note shows the root element, the number of elements and attributes, the nesting depth and the namespace.

Pick a Mode at the top: Format, Minify, Tree view, XML to JSON or JSON to XML. Below the result sit the settings for that mode and an XPath box that runs a query against your document.

Everything happens in your browser, with its own built-in XML parser. Your XML is not uploaded, so this xml formatter online works the same for a small RSS feed and for a private config file.

This page is an xml formatter and validator in one, but it is worth being exact about what validator means here. It checks that your XML is well-formed: every tag is closed, tags are nested in the right order, attribute values are in quotes, there is one root element, and characters such as & and < are written as entities like &amp; and &lt;.

It does not check your XML against a schema. XSD and DTD validation, which asks whether the right elements appear in the right places with the right types, is not something this XML formatter does. A document can be well-formed and still be rejected by a system that expects a certain schema.

When the XML is not well-formed, the result box shows the message from the browser's parser, such as a mismatched tag or an unescaped character, with the line and column. Under the input you see that line with a ^ marker under the column, so you can find the spot quickly in a long file.

Format mode is the xml beautifier online that most people come for. It reads your document, drops the whitespace-only gaps between tags and writes it again with one element per line and clean indentation. Choose 2 spaces, 4 spaces or Tab under Indent.

Elements with a single text value stay on one line, like <title>Notes</title>. Comments, CDATA sections, processing instructions and the doctype are written back in place. The <?xml?> declaration is kept as it was, or added as version 1.0 with UTF-8 when the input has none, as long as Keep or add the <?xml?> declaration is ticked.

Most of the time you just want the XML formatter to make a document that arrived as one long line readable. That is what xml pretty print online is about, and the Tags and attributes card lets you match the house style of your project:

Some XML must not be re-indented. In an element that mixes text and tags, such as <p>Hello <b>world</b>!</p> in XHTML or DocBook, adding line breaks would change the text. In those elements, and in any element with xml:space="preserve", the content is written back exactly as it was. Only the surrounding structure is formatted.

Minify does the opposite of Format. It removes the whitespace-only text between tags and returns the whole document on one line, which is handy for API requests, test data and embedding XML in a string. This xml minifier online keeps the declaration, keeps whitespace inside elements marked xml:space="preserve", and removes comments if you untick Keep comments.

Text with real content is left alone, so a minified file still holds the same data, and the XML formatter can expand it again at any time. Press Download to save it as minified.xml.

Tree view turns the document into a collapsible outline. Each element shows its name, up to six attributes and, for elements without children, the first part of its text. The first two levels open by default; click an element to open or close it, and a closed element shows how many children it has.

This makes the page a handy xml viewer online for large feeds, sitemaps and exports, where scrolling through thousands of lines of text is slow. The XPath box still works in this mode, so you can browse and query side by side.

Choose XML to JSON and the result becomes JSON, using the indent you pick. The rules are simple and predictable:

The XPath box runs an XPath 1.0 expression against the document and lists the matches below it. Elements are shown as XML, attributes as name="value" and text nodes as plain text, up to 500 matches. Expressions such as count(//book) return a number, a string or a boolean instead.

Use it as an xpath tester online before you put an expression into code. The sample starts with //book[price > 20]/title/text(), which returns the titles of books priced above 20. If the root has a default namespace (xmlns="…"), plain names will not match; use the prefix d: instead, as in //d:item. Prefixes declared on the root element, such as xmlns:g, work as written.

Open file reads the file in your browser and puts its text in the input box. It accepts the XML family as well as plain .xml: SVG graphics, XSD schemas, XSL and XSLT stylesheets, RSS and Atom feeds, KML and GPX map tracks, Apple .plist files, .config and .csproj project files, plus .json and .txt for JSON to XML. The XML formatter can format, minify, show as a tree or query any of them with XPath.

To turn a formatted SVG into an image, use SVG to PNG. To compare two versions of a config after formatting both the same way, paste them into the Diff Checker.

Many people use an xml validator online only to answer one question: will this file parse? The green Well-formed XML line answers it as you type, without a button. If it turns into an error, fix the spot shown and the line comes back.

Keep the limits in mind. Well-formed is not the same as valid against an XSD or DTD, and some errors are reported where the parser noticed them, which can be a line or two after the real mistake.

This xml formatter free of charge has no account, no limit on the number of documents and no upload. Parsing, formatting, the tree, XPath and the JSON conversion all run in your browser. Opened files are read on your device and are not sent anywhere.

Only your mode and settings are stored, in this browser's local storage. Very large documents depend on your device's memory, and the Tree view shows up to 500 children per element to keep the page fast.