Tools/utilities to format XML

[Zoe Hart]

We receive XML from partner applications. Sometimes it's saved out to a file
and people need to read it and possibly edit it. But it's not nicely
formated with line breaks and indentations to make it easy to read. Are
there readily available tools that will open a file that contains one long
XML string and add the necessary line breaks and indentation to make it more
readable?

Thanks,
Zoe

[Martin Honnen]

Visual Studio's XML editor can format an XML document. There is a free
Express edition.
You could also run the XML through an XSLT identity transformation where
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>.

--

Martin Honnen --- MVP XML
http://JavaScript.FAQTs.com/

[Peter Flynn]

Emacs with psgml-mode and xxml-mode

///Peter

[PSULionRP]

We actually use a product called XML Spy. Why any software company would
include the word "Spy" in their software solution product is beyond me. But
it works really nice in terms of identifying and indenting XML. There is a
free 30-day trial of the software however I think a seat license is a little
expensive.

http://www.altova.com/download/xmlspy/xml_editor_enterprise.html

[Zoe Hart]

I tried opening the file in Visual Studio and it did nothing to format it.
Is there something I need to do to get it to format it?

"Martin Honnen" <maho...@yahoo.de> wrote in message
news:uf$SZn4AJ...@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...

[Martin Honnen]

Zoe Hart wrote:
> I tried opening the file in Visual Studio and it did nothing to format it.
> Is there something I need to do to get it to format it?

There should be buttons in your toolbar to "format the whole document"
and to "reformat selection".