📄Output appears herePaste XML and click Beautify
XML Beautifier
Free online XML formatter, beautifier and validator. Prettify minified XML with proper indentation, minify XML for production, or validate XML syntax. Uses the browser's built-in DOMParser — 100% client-side.
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100% browser-based
No data sent to servers
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What is a XML Beautifier?
XML (Extensible Markup Language) is a tag-based format used for configuration files (Maven pom.xml, Android layouts), data exchange (SOAP APIs, RSS/Atom feeds), and office documents (docx, xlsx are ZIP files containing XML). Minified or malformed XML is nearly impossible to read and debug by eye.
This tool parses and re-indents XML in your browser using the native DOMParser API. It highlights the first syntax error found, preserving attributes and namespaces. Supports XML documents, fragments, and HTML-embedded SVG/MathML.
What is XML?
XML (eXtensible Markup Language) is a markup language that defines rules for encoding documents in a format that's both human-readable and machine-readable. It's used in web services (SOAP), configuration files, data exchange formats, RSS feeds, and many enterprise systems.
What's the difference between XML beautify and minify?
Beautify (also called pretty-print) adds proper indentation and line breaks to make XML readable — use this when debugging API responses or reading config files. Minify removes all unnecessary whitespace to reduce file size — use this for production XML payloads sent over the network.
Why is my XML invalid?
Common XML errors: unclosed tags (every opening tag must have a closing tag), case-sensitive tag names (XML is case-sensitive, unlike HTML), missing quotes around attribute values, special characters not escaped (use & for &, < for <, > for >, ' for ', " for "), and multiple root elements (XML requires exactly one root element).
What is the difference between XML and HTML?
HTML defines a fixed set of tags for web content (div, p, h1). XML has no predefined tags — you define your own schema. HTML is forgiving of errors (browsers render broken HTML). XML is strict — a single unclosed tag makes the entire document invalid. XML is used for data interchange (RSS, SVG, SOAP APIs, Android layouts, Maven configs).
What causes "XML parsing failed" errors?
Common causes: unclosed tags (<br> must be <br/> in XML), missing XML declaration, invalid characters (&, <, >, ", ' must be escaped as & < > " '), case mismatches (XML is case-sensitive, <Tag> and <tag> are different), and byte order mark (BOM) issues with UTF encoding.
What is an XML namespace?
Namespaces prevent tag name collisions when combining XML from different sources. A namespace is a URI prefix: xmlns:svg="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg". Tags in that namespace are prefixed: <svg:rect>. The URI does not need to point to a real document — it is just a unique identifier. Common in SOAP, XHTML, and RSS.
When should I use XML instead of JSON?
Use XML when: the spec requires it (SOAP APIs, RSS feeds, Android resources, Maven pom.xml, MS Office formats), you need mixed content (text and markup together like HTML), you need comments in data files, or you are working with existing XML-based systems. For new APIs, JSON is generally preferred due to simpler parsing and smaller payload size.