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XML Formatter & Minifier

What is XML?

XML (eXtensible Markup Language) formatting takes compact, minified, or poorly indented XML and reformats it with proper indentation and line breaks, making the document structure visible and human-readable. XML is used extensively in enterprise software, SOAP web services, RSS/Atom feeds, Android manifests, Maven pom.xml, Spring configuration, SVG, XHTML, and many other contexts. Minified XML from API responses or build tools is unreadable. This formatter also validates the XML and highlights parse errors — helping you quickly identify missing tags, wrong nesting, or invalid characters.

How to Use the XML Formatter

  1. Paste your XML (minified, compact, or messy) into the input box.

  2. Click Format — the properly indented XML appears in the output.

  3. If the XML is invalid, the error is displayed with the location of the problem.

  4. Adjust the indentation size if needed (default is 2 spaces).

  5. Copy the formatted XML for use in your editor, documentation, or API.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does XML formatting change the document's meaning? No — for standard XML documents used as data. Whitespace between XML elements is generally insignificant. However, in XML where whitespace is meaningful (mixed content with text nodes), formatting can technically change the document's information set. This is rarely an issue for data-oriented XML.

What causes 'XML parse error'? Common XML errors: unclosed tags (every opening tag needs a closing tag), attribute values not in quotes, & not escaped as &amp;, < not escaped as &lt; in text content, multiple root elements (XML requires exactly one root), and invalid characters in tag names.

What is the difference between XML and HTML? HTML is designed for displaying content in browsers and is lenient about missing closing tags and attribute quoting. XML is strict — all tags must be properly closed and nested, attributes must be quoted, and the document must have exactly one root element. XHTML is HTML written to XML rules.

Keywords: XML formatter, XML beautifier, XML minifier, pretty print XML, XML validator, format XML online, XML indentation, XML parser