Pretty printing XML with javascript

Question

I have a string that represents a non indented XML that I would like to pretty-print. For example:

<root><node/></root>

should become:

<root>
  <node/>
</root>

Syntax highlighting is not a requirement. To tackle the problem I first transform the XML to add carriage returns and white spaces and then use a pre tag to output the XML. To add new lines and white spaces I wrote the following function:

function formatXml(xml) {
    var formatted = '';
    var reg = /(>)(<)(\/*)/g;
    xml = xml.replace(reg, '$1\r\n$2$3');
    var pad = 0;
    jQuery.each(xml.split('\r\n'), function(index, node) {
        var indent = 0;
        if (node.match( /.+<\/\w[^>]*>$/ )) {
            indent = 0;
        } else if (node.match( /^<\/\w/ )) {
            if (pad != 0) {
                pad -= 1;
            }
        } else if (node.match( /^<\w[^>]*[^\/]>.*$/ )) {
            indent = 1;
        } else {
            indent = 0;
        }

        var padding = '';
        for (var i = 0; i < pad; i++) {
            padding += '  ';
        }

        formatted += padding + node + '\r\n';
        pad += indent;
    });

    return formatted;
}

I then call the function like this:

jQuery('pre.formatted-xml').text(formatXml('<root><node1/></root>'));

This works perfectly fine for me but while I was writing the previous function I thought that there must be a better way. So my question is do you know of any better way given an XML string to pretty-print it in an html page? Any javascript frameworks and/or plugins that could do the job are welcome. My only requirement is this to be done on the client side.

Answer 1

what about creating a stub node (document.createElement('div') - or using your library equivalent), filling it with the xml string (via innerHTML) and calling simple recursive function for the root element/or the stub element in case you don't have a root. The function would call itself for all the child nodes.

You could then syntax-highlight along the way, be certain the markup is well-formed (done automatically by browser when appending via innerHTML) etc. It wouldn't be that much code and probably fast enough.

Answer 2

here is another function to format xml

function formatXml(xml){
    var out = "";
    var tab = "    ";
    var indent = 0;
    var inClosingTag=false;
    var dent=function(no){
        out += "\n";
        for(var i=0; i < no; i++)
            out+=tab;
    }


    for (var i=0; i < xml.length; i++) {
        var c = xml.charAt(i);
        if(c=='<'){
            // handle </
            if(xml.charAt(i+1) == '/'){
                inClosingTag = true;
                dent(--indent);
            }
            out+=c;
        }else if(c=='>'){
            out+=c;
            // handle />
            if(xml.charAt(i-1) == '/'){
                out+="\n";
                //dent(--indent)
            }else{
              if(!inClosingTag)
                dent(++indent);
              else{
                out+="\n";
                inClosingTag=false;
              }
            }
        }else{
          out+=c;
        }
    }
    return out;
}

Answer 3

Or if you'd just like another js function to do it, I've modified Darin's (a lot):

var formatXml = this.formatXml = function (xml) {
    var reg = /(>)(<)(\/*)/g;
    var wsexp = / *(.*) +\n/g;
    var contexp = /(<.+>)(.+\n)/g;
    xml = xml.replace(reg, '$1\n$2$3').replace(wsexp, '$1\n').replace(contexp, '$1\n$2');
    var pad = 0;
    var formatted = '';
    var lines = xml.split('\n');
    var indent = 0;
    var lastType = 'other';
    // 4 types of tags - single, closing, opening, other (text, doctype, comment) - 4*4 = 16 transitions 
    var transitions = {
        'single->single'    : 0,
        'single->closing'   : -1,
        'single->opening'   : 0,
        'single->other'     : 0,
        'closing->single'   : 0,
        'closing->closing'  : -1,
        'closing->opening'  : 0,
        'closing->other'    : 0,
        'opening->single'   : 1,
        'opening->closing'  : 0, 
        'opening->opening'  : 1,
        'opening->other'    : 1,
        'other->single'     : 0,
        'other->closing'    : -1,
        'other->opening'    : 0,
        'other->other'      : 0
    };

    for (var i=0; i < lines.length; i++) {
        var ln = lines[i];
        var single = Boolean(ln.match(/<.+\/>/)); // is this line a single tag? ex. <br />
        var closing = Boolean(ln.match(/<\/.+>/)); // is this a closing tag? ex. </a>
        var opening = Boolean(ln.match(/<[^!].*>/)); // is this even a tag (that's not <!something>)
        var type = single ? 'single' : closing ? 'closing' : opening ? 'opening' : 'other';
        var fromTo = lastType + '->' + type;
        lastType = type;
        var padding = '';

        indent += transitions[fromTo];
        for (var j = 0; j < indent; j++) {
            padding += '    ';
        }

        formatted += padding + ln + '\n';
    }

    return formatted;
};

Answer 4

This can be done using native javascript tools, without 3rd party libs, extending the @Dimitre Novatchev's answer:

var prettifyXml = function(sourceXml)
{
    var xmlDoc = new DOMParser().parseFromString(sourceXml, 'application/xml');
    var xsltDoc = new DOMParser().parseFromString([
        // describes how we want to modify the XML - indent everything
        '<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">',
        '  <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/>',
        '  <xsl:template match="para[content-style][not(text())]">', // change to just text() to strip space in text nodes
        '    <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>',
        '  </xsl:template>',
        '  <xsl:template match="node()|@*">',
        '    <xsl:copy><xsl:apply-templates select="node()|@*"/></xsl:copy>',
        '  </xsl:template>',
        '  <xsl:output indent="yes"/>',
        '</xsl:stylesheet>',
    ].join('\n'), 'application/xml');

    var xsltProcessor = new XSLTProcessor();    
    xsltProcessor.importStylesheet(xsltDoc);
    var resultDoc = xsltProcessor.transformToDocument(xmlDoc);
    var resultXml = new XMLSerializer().serializeToString(resultDoc);
    return resultXml;
};

console.log(prettifyXml('<root><node/></root>'));

Outputs:

<root>
  <node/>
</root>

JSFiddle

Answer 5

This library does exactly what you want!

https://code.google.com/p/vkbeautify/

Answer 6

XMLSpectrum formats XML, supports attribute indentation and also does syntax-highlighting for XML and any embedded XPath expressions:

XMLSpectrum is an open source project, coded in XSLT 2.0 - so you can run this server-side with a processor such as Saxon-HE (recommended) or client-side using Saxon-CE.

XMLSpectrum is not yet optimised to run in the browser - hence the recommendation to run this server-side.