XML Formatter / Beautifier

Format, beautify and indent XML documents with custom spacing and attribute preservation.

100% Free · No Sign-up · Runs in Your Browser

About the XML Formatter / Beautifier

XML (Extensible Markup Language) is widely used in enterprise services, SOAP APIs, RSS feeds, Android manifests, and configuration files. However, raw XML exports are frequently collapsed onto a single line without indentation. This XML Formatter parses and beautifies XML documents into clean, indented structures.

This tool is useful for backend engineers integrating SOAP/XML web services, mobile developers configuring XML layouts, and system administrators editing application server configs. It properly nests elements, formats attributes, and handles self-closing tags and CDATA blocks.

To use it, paste your XML into the input box, choose your indentation size (2 or 4 spaces), and click 'Format / Beautify XML'. The formatted document appears in the output box with line and character count stats.

For example, a raw XML string is indented hierarchically with closing tags vertically aligned with their opening counterparts.

A frequent XML issue is unescaped special characters inside text nodes. In XML, characters like '&' and '<' must be escaped as '&amp;' and '&lt;' or wrapped in CDATA blocks.

Tip: If you need to confirm that an XML document has no syntax errors before deploying, use our XML Validator tool.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q.Does this formatter handle XML declaration headers?

Yes, headers like <?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> are preserved at the top of the formatted output.

Q.Can it handle self-closing XML tags?

Yes, tags ending in /> are recognized as self-closing and indented without unnecessary closing elements.

Q.Is my XML data uploaded to any server?

No, all XML tokenization and indentation happen locally in your web browser.

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