Pretty-print, minify, and validate XML with syntax highlighting and line numbers. Detailed error messages with line and column information. Runs entirely in your browser.
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a foundational data format used in enterprise software, APIs, configuration files, and data exchange. While XML has largely been supplanted by JSON in modern web APIs, it remains the dominant format in many industries: SOAP web services, Maven and Gradle build configurations, Android layouts, RSS/Atom feeds, SVG graphics, Microsoft Office documents (DOCX, XLSX), and countless legacy enterprise systems.
Raw or minified XML is notoriously difficult to read. A single long string with no whitespace or indentation makes it nearly impossible to understand the document structure. Pretty-printing XML adds consistent indentation that makes the tag hierarchy immediately visible — you can see at a glance which elements are children of which parents, and how deeply nested the structure goes.
Not all XML is valid XML. XML has strict syntax rules: every tag must be properly closed, attribute values must be quoted, special characters like & and < must be escaped, and the document must have exactly one root element. This tool uses the browser's native DOMParser to validate your XML and provides detailed error messages including line and column information when problems are found.
When transmitting XML over a network or storing it compactly, you want to minimize file size by removing all unnecessary whitespace. Minification strips indentation, newlines, and comments to produce the smallest possible valid XML. This is particularly useful for XML in API responses, embedded configurations, or any context where bandwidth or storage matters.
This formatter is useful for developers working with SOAP APIs, operations engineers dealing with Maven POM files, Android developers reading resource files, developers debugging RSS feeds, data engineers working with XML-based ETL pipelines, and anyone who receives an XML file and needs to read it without a dedicated IDE. The syntax highlighting makes it much easier to spot structural problems visually.
The output uses colour-coded syntax highlighting to distinguish different parts of the XML document: element tags in blue, attribute names in purple, attribute values in green, comments in grey, CDATA sections in orange, and processing instructions in red. Line numbers help you navigate to specific positions, especially when working with large XML documents.