XML Formatter & Beautifier
Format, beautify, and validate XML instantly. Paste your XML, choose indentation style, and get clean, readable output. Minify for production or beautify for debugging. All processing happens in your browser — nothing is uploaded.
About XML Formatter & Beautifier
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a widely used data format for storing and transporting structured information. It powers web services, configuration files, data feeds, and document formats across nearly every programming language and platform. While XML is designed to be both human-readable and machine-readable, real-world XML often arrives as a single unformatted line or with inconsistent indentation, making it nearly impossible to read or debug without proper formatting.
This XML Formatter and Beautifier solves that problem by letting you paste any XML string and instantly produce clean, properly indented output. You can choose between 2 spaces, 4 spaces, or tab indentation to match your team's coding standards. The formatter handles deeply nested structures, preserves text content, and produces consistently indented output that is easy to scan and understand. Whether you are working with SOAP responses, RSS feeds, SVG files, Maven POM configurations, or Android layout XML, this tool makes your data readable in one click.
The minify feature does the opposite: it strips all unnecessary whitespace and line breaks to compress your XML into the smallest possible representation. This is useful when you need to embed XML in a URL parameter, store it in a database field, or reduce payload size for API responses. Minified XML is functionally identical to the beautified version — only the formatting changes.
Beyond formatting, the tool also validates your XML using the browser's built-in DOMParser. If your XML contains syntax errors such as unclosed tags, mismatched element names, or invalid characters, the tool displays a clear error message with details about what went wrong and where in the document the problem was found. This makes it a quick way to catch common XML mistakes before deploying configuration changes or sending API requests.
The statistics panel gives you a quick overview of your XML document structure, showing the total number of elements, attributes, text nodes, and the maximum nesting depth. This information is helpful when exploring unfamiliar XML documents or verifying that a transformation produced the expected structure. All processing runs entirely in your browser using the native DOMParser API, so your data is never sent to any server.
FAQ
Q: What types of XML can this tool format?
This tool can format any well-formed XML document, including SOAP messages, RSS and Atom feeds, SVG graphics, XHTML pages, configuration files (Maven POM, Spring, Android layouts), and custom XML data structures. It handles XML declarations, processing instructions, CDATA sections, comments, and namespaces.
Q: What does "Minify" do and when should I use it?
Minify removes all unnecessary whitespace, indentation, and line breaks from your XML, producing the most compact representation possible. Use it when you need to reduce file size for network transmission, embed XML in a JSON string or URL parameter, or store XML in a space-constrained database field. The minified XML is functionally identical to the formatted version.
Q: How does the XML validation work?
The tool uses the browser's native DOMParser to parse your XML. If the XML is not well-formed (for example, unclosed tags, mismatched element names, or invalid characters), the parser returns an error document with details about the problem. The tool extracts this error information and displays it in a clear, readable format so you can quickly locate and fix the issue.
Q: Is my XML data safe when using this tool?
Yes. All formatting, minification, and validation happens entirely in your browser using JavaScript and the native DOMParser API. Your XML data is never sent to any server, uploaded, or stored anywhere. You can verify this by using the tool with your network disconnected — it will work exactly the same way.