XML Pretty Print
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Machine-generated XML often arrives as one enormous line — SOAP responses, serialised configuration, and API payloads are all commonly emitted without any formatting at all. Reading that is impractical, and finding the element you need is worse. Pretty printing re-indents the document so each element sits at a depth that reflects its position in the tree, making the structure visible immediately. Paste the compact markup and get back a properly formatted document you can actually scan, with your preferred indentation. The tool checks well-formedness as it formats, so if the document cannot be parsed you are told where rather than being handed silently mangled output. Attributes, namespaces, CDATA sections, and comments are all preserved exactly — only the whitespace between elements changes. It runs client-side, so nothing is uploaded.
Features
- Re-indents minified or badly formatted XML
- Configurable indentation width
- Preserves attributes, namespaces, CDATA, and comments
- Checks well-formedness and reports error positions
- Handles deeply nested documents and long element lists
- One-click copy of the formatted markup
- Fast on large SOAP and export payloads
- Runs fully client-side — no upload
Why use this xml pretty print?
- Turns single-line machine output into readable markup
- Reveals structural problems that compact XML hides
- Keeps payloads private with local-only processing
- Immediate results with no size restriction
- Free and unlimited
Frequently asked questions
What does pretty printing XML do?
It re-serialises the document with line breaks and indentation that reflect element nesting. The markup's meaning is unchanged — only whitespace between elements is added.
Does pretty printing change my data?
Element names, attributes, and text content are preserved. Note that whitespace between elements can be significant in some XML applications, so a pretty-printed document is not always byte-equivalent for those consumers.
Why will my XML not format?
It is not well-formed. Common causes are an unclosed tag, mismatched element names, unquoted attribute values, or more than one root element.
Are CDATA sections preserved?
Yes. CDATA content is left exactly as written, since its whole purpose is to hold text that must not be interpreted as markup.
Is pretty print the same as an XML formatter?
Yes — "pretty print", "beautify", and "format" all mean re-indenting the document so a person can read it.
How do I compact it again?
Use the XML Minifier to strip the formatting whitespace back out when you need a smaller payload.