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📄 XML Formatter

Format, beautify, and validate XML instantly


                

About XML Formatter

Format, beautify, and validate XML online. Pretty-print minified XML with proper indentation. Supports custom indent size. This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data is sent to any server.

How to Use XML Formatter

  1. Paste your XML content into the input area
  2. Click Format to beautify with proper indentation
  3. View syntax errors with line numbers and descriptions
  4. Toggle between formatted and minified output
  5. Copy the formatted XML for your configuration or data files

About XML Formatter

XML remains foundational in enterprise systems, configuration files (Maven pom.xml, Android layouts, Spring configs), data interchange (SOAP, RSS, SVG), and document formats (DOCX, XLSX are ZIP archives of XML files). Despite JSON's popularity for APIs, XML's features — namespaces, schemas, XSLT transformations, and mixed content — keep it essential in many domains. This formatter parses XML, validates structure, and outputs it with consistent indentation. It catches unclosed tags, mismatched nesting, invalid characters, and encoding issues. Minified XML from production systems becomes readable, and hand-edited XML gets its indentation fixed. All processing happens locally in your browser.

Frequently Asked Questions

What's the difference between XML and HTML?

XML is strict: every tag must be closed, attributes must be quoted, and it's case-sensitive. HTML is forgiving: browsers render
, unclosed tags, and unquoted attributes. XHTML attempted to combine both — HTML following XML rules — but HTML5 relaxed back to lenient parsing.

Is XML still relevant?

Absolutely. Enterprise systems (SOAP services, EDI), configuration (Maven, Android, Spring, .NET), document formats (Office documents, SVG), and data standards (HL7 in healthcare, XBRL in finance) all rely on XML. It's less trendy than JSON but deeply embedded.

What are XML namespaces?

Namespaces prevent naming conflicts when combining XML from different sources. xmlns:prefix='URI' declares a namespace. and can coexist without ambiguity. The URI is just an identifier — it doesn't need to point to a real resource.

How do I validate XML against a schema?

XML schemas (XSD) define the structure, elements, attributes, and data types allowed. Validation checks your XML against the schema. This formatter validates well-formedness (syntax) but not schema compliance — use dedicated XML validators for schema validation.

What's CDATA for?

CDATA sections () contain text that won't be parsed as XML markup. Useful for embedding code, HTML, or text containing < and & characters without escaping them as < and &.

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