Format, validate, and beautify XML instantly. Pretty print with configurable indentation and syntax highlighting for tags, attributes, values, comments, and CDATA sections. Minify XML for production use, check well-formedness with detailed error reporting, and view document statistics. Free, runs entirely in your browser -- no data ever leaves your machine.
Formatted output will appear here...
Format any XML with configurable indentation -- choose 2 spaces, 4 spaces, or tabs. The output is clean, readable, and ready to copy or download as an .xml file.
Validate XML well-formedness instantly using the browser's built-in DOMParser. Get detailed error messages when your XML has mismatched tags, improper nesting, or invalid syntax.
Color-coded output distinguishes tags, attributes, values, comments, and CDATA sections at a glance. Line numbers make it easy to reference specific parts of your XML structure.
Compress XML by removing whitespace, line breaks, and comments. See exactly how many characters were saved. Ideal for network transfer and storage optimization.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) remains one of the most important data formats in enterprise software, web services, and configuration management. While JSON has become the dominant format for web APIs, XML continues to be essential for SOAP web services, Maven build files, Android layouts, SVG graphics, RSS/Atom feeds, XSLT transformations, and many legacy systems. A reliable XML formatter is an indispensable tool for any developer working with these technologies.
Formatting XML -- also called pretty printing or beautifying -- adds proper indentation and line breaks to make the document structure visible at a glance. When you are debugging a SOAP response, reviewing a Maven POM file, or inspecting an SVG graphic, formatted XML lets you quickly identify nested elements, attributes, namespaces, and structural patterns. Minified XML removes all unnecessary whitespace to reduce file size for production use, network transfer, and storage.
Paste your XML into the input pane and click Format to pretty print it with syntax highlighting and line numbers. Click Minify to compress it by removing whitespace and comments. Click Validate to check if the document is well-formed. The tool uses the browser's built-in DOMParser for validation, providing accurate error messages when parsing fails. Everything runs entirely in your browser -- no data is ever sent to a server.
<br/>), tags must be properly nested without overlapping (e.g., <a><b></b></a> is valid but <a><b></a></b> is not), all attribute values must be enclosed in quotes (single or double), element and attribute names are case-sensitive (<Name> and <name> are different), and special characters must be escaped using entities (< for <, > for >, & for &). Documents that follow all these rules can be parsed by any XML parser.
<Name> and <name> are different elements), while HTML is case-insensitive. XHTML is a variant that applies XML's strict rules to HTML, requiring well-formed documents.
<![CDATA[ ... ]]> block is treated as literal text, meaning characters like <, >, and & do not need to be escaped. CDATA sections are commonly used to embed code snippets (JavaScript, SQL, HTML), include text with many special characters, store raw data that should not be processed by the XML parser, and embed HTML fragments inside XML documents. The only sequence that cannot appear inside a CDATA section is the closing delimiter ]]>.
xmlns attribute and associates a prefix with a unique URI (which serves as an identifier, not necessarily a web address). For example, xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" allows you to use the soap: prefix to distinguish SOAP elements from other elements with the same local name. Namespaces are essential in SOAP web services, XSLT stylesheets, XSD schemas, SVG embedded in HTML, and any scenario where multiple XML vocabularies coexist in the same document. A default namespace can be declared without a prefix using xmlns="...".
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