</> XML Formatter
Format messy XML or HTML markup into readable, indented output. Also supports minification for production use.
How to Use the XML Formatter
The XML Formatter tool lets you pretty-print or minify any XML or HTML document instantly in your browser. To use it, paste your XML — whether it is a single long line or already partially indented — into the left input panel. Click Beautify to reformat the document with two-space indentation per nesting level, making the tag hierarchy easy to follow. Attributes are preserved on their parent tag. Click Minify to collapse all whitespace between tags and produce the most compact representation possible for production use or network transmission.
The tool uses the browser's built-in DOMParser to parse your XML, so it will catch and report structural errors such as unclosed tags, duplicate attributes, or invalid characters. Click Sample to load an example book catalog. Once formatted, click Copy to copy the output. The XML Formatter supports standard XML 1.0 including namespaces, processing instructions, and CDATA sections. All processing is done locally in your browser.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an XML Formatter?
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An XML Formatter (also called an XML Beautifier or XML Pretty Printer) is a tool that reformats XML markup with consistent indentation and line breaks to make the document structure easier for humans to read. It can also minify XML by removing unnecessary whitespace.
What is the difference between XML and JSON?
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Both XML and JSON are data interchange formats. XML uses opening and closing tags (like HTML) and supports attributes, comments, and namespaces. JSON uses key-value pairs and is more compact. JSON is generally preferred for web APIs today, while XML is common in enterprise systems, SOAP services, configuration files, and document formats like SVG and DOCX.
Can I use this tool to format HTML?
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You can format well-formed XHTML (which follows XML rules) with this tool. For regular HTML5 that uses void elements without closing tags (like <br> or <img>), a dedicated HTML formatter is more appropriate because HTML5 is not strict XML.
Why does my XML show a parse error?
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Common XML errors include: unclosed tags, mismatched tag names (XML is case-sensitive), missing quote around attribute values, using characters like &, < or > inside content without encoding them as &, <, or >, and having more than one root element.