About XML Beautifier
Paste your XML and get clean, properly indented output with syntax highlighting. Detects unclosed tags and malformed markup with exact line numbers. Browser-only.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an XML formatter?
An XML formatter validates and re-indents an XML document with consistent whitespace and nested element alignment. It catches unclosed tags, mismatched element names, invalid characters, and malformed attributes, reporting the exact line of each error.
Does the XML formatter validate well-formedness at the same time?
Yes. To format XML the parser must check well-formedness first — unclosed tags, mismatched tag names, illegal characters in attribute values, and missing root elements are all caught. The error is reported with line and column. If the XML is not well-formed, no formatted output is produced.
What is the difference between well-formed XML and valid XML?
Well-formed XML follows all XML syntax rules: proper nesting, closed tags, quoted attributes, no illegal characters. Valid XML additionally conforms to a DTD or XSD schema — required elements are present, attributes have the allowed values, elements appear in the prescribed order. This tool checks well-formedness only. Validation against a schema requires an XSD validator.
Does the XML formatter preserve comments and CDATA sections?
Yes. XML comments (<!-- -->) and CDATA sections (<![CDATA[...]]>) are preserved exactly during formatting. Only whitespace between elements is modified. This is important for XHTML, SVG, and documents where comments carry configuration metadata.
Can I use the XML formatter for SVG and XHTML files?
Yes. SVG and XHTML are both valid XML and can be formatted with this tool. SVG path data inside d="" attributes is treated as a string and left untouched. XHTML's self-closing tags and namespace declarations are preserved. The formatter applies standard 2-space indentation unless you change the setting.
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