XML Formatter & Beautifier

What Is XML?

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a text-based format for storing and transporting structured data. Unlike HTML — which has a fixed set of tags with specific meanings — XML lets you define your own tag names to represent whatever data structure makes sense for your application.

<product>
  <id>SKU-4892</id>
  <name>Wireless Headphones</name>
  <price currency="USD">89.99</price>
  <inStock>true</inStock>
</product>

XML is self-describing: anyone reading the tags can understand what the data represents, without needing documentation. This made it the dominant data exchange format throughout the 2000s and early 2010s, and it remains deeply embedded in enterprise systems, web services, Office file formats, Android manifests, configuration systems, and web standards.

The Problem with Minified XML

Real-world XML often arrives as a single dense line — minified to save bandwidth from APIs, compressed by tools, or exported from database systems that don't bother formatting their output:

<catalog><product id="1"><name>Widget A</name><price>9.99</price><category>hardware</category></product><product id="2"><name>Widget B</name><price>14.99</price><category>software</category></product></catalog>

This is technically valid XML that any parser reads perfectly. But for a human trying to understand the structure, debug an error, or make an edit — it's essentially unreadable.

Formatting it with proper indentation reveals the hierarchy immediately:

<catalog>
  <product id="1">
    <name>Widget A</name>
    <price>9.99</price>
    <category>hardware</category>
  </product>
  <product id="2">
    <name>Widget B</name>
    <price>14.99</price>
    <category>software</category>
  </product>
</catalog>

The parent-child relationships are now obvious at a glance.

What the Formatter Does

Beautify (Pretty Print): Adds consistent indentation (2 or 4 spaces, or tabs — your choice), line breaks between elements, and preserves all attributes and text content unchanged.

Minify: Removes all whitespace that isn't part of the actual data, collapsing the XML to the smallest possible representation. Use this before embedding XML in an API response, storing in a database field, or transmitting over a bandwidth-constrained connection.

Validate: Checks that the XML is well-formed — meaning it follows the structural rules of XML:

• Every opening tag has a matching closing tag
• Tags are properly ne...