XML Formatter
Format and beautify XML documents with proper indentation. Makes minified or compressed XML readable.
About XML Formatter
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is one of the most widely used data interchange formats, powering everything from web services and SOAP APIs to configuration files and document standards like SVG, XHTML, and RSS. Properly formatted XML is essential for debugging, code review, and maintaining configuration files that teams share across projects. This tool adds indentation and line breaks to make dense or minified XML human-readable without altering any data, attributes, or element structure.
XML Formatting Quick Reference
Well-formed XML must follow strict rules: every opening tag must have a matching closing tag (or be self-closing), attribute values must be quoted, and element names are case-sensitive. Special characters like &, <, and > must be escaped using entity references. The XML declaration (<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>) should appear as the very first line of the document.
XML remains the standard format for SOAP web services, Maven POM files, Android layouts, Microsoft Office documents (OOXML), and enterprise integration patterns. While JSON has overtaken XML for REST APIs, XML's support for schemas (XSD), namespaces, and validation makes it indispensable for enterprise and government systems. Common indentation styles use 2 or 4 spaces per nesting level -- this formatter uses 2-space indentation for compact, readable output.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is XML formatting?
XML formatting adds proper indentation and line breaks to make XML documents readable. Each nested element gets one level of indentation, making the hierarchy clear and easy to understand.
Does formatting change the XML data?
Formatting only adds whitespace between tags. The actual data, attributes, and structure remain unchanged. However, if whitespace is significant in your XML (e.g., in text nodes), formatting could affect the content.