XML Formatter

What is an XML Formatter?

An XML formatter takes compact or inconsistently indented XML and re-prints it with one element per line and indentation that reflects the document's nesting. XML (Extensible Markup Language) remains central to configuration files, SOAP web services, RSS feeds, SVG graphics, Office documents, and countless enterprise systems — and like JSON, it is often delivered minified.

Our XML Formatter tokenizes the markup, tracks element depth, and rebuilds the document with clean indentation. It also runs a well-formedness check using the browser's native XML parser so you immediately know whether the structure is valid.

How to Format XML

• Paste your XML, or click Sample to load an example document
• Choose your indentation: 2 spaces, 4 spaces, or tabs
• The formatted, nested output appears instantly alongside a validity status
• Open and close tags are aligned by depth so structure is obvious at a glance
• Click Copy to copy the beautified XML to your clipboard

Well-Formed vs Valid XML

This tool checks that your XML is well-formed — meaning every tag is properly closed and nested, attributes are quoted, and there is a single root element. Well-formedness is the baseline requirement for any XML document and is what most parsers enforce.

Well-formedness is distinct from schema validity (conformance to a DTD or XSD), which checks the document against a specific set of rules. If your XML is not well-formed, the tool reports the parser error so you can correct the structure before worrying about schema rules.

Common Use Cases

Developers format XML when debugging SOAP API responses, editing configuration and build files, inspecting RSS or Atom feeds, cleaning up exported SVG, and reading machine-generated XML that arrives as a single unreadable line. A properly indented document makes nesting errors and missing tags far easier to spot. All processing happens locally in your browser for complete privacy.