How to pretty print XML from Java?

Question

I have a Java String that contains XML, with no line feeds or indentations. I would like to turn it into a String with nicely formatted XML. How do I do this?

String unformattedXml = "<tag><nested>hello</nested></tag>";
String formattedXml = new [UnknownClass]().format(unformattedXml);

Note: My input is a String. My output is a String.

(Basic) mock result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
  <tag>
    <nested>hello</nested>
  </tag>
</root>

Answer 1

I saw one answer using Scala, so here is another one in Groovy, just in case someone finds it interesting. The default indentation is 2 steps, XmlNodePrinter constructor can be passed another value as well.

def xml = "<tag><nested>hello</nested></tag>"
def stringWriter = new StringWriter()
def node = new XmlParser().parseText(xml);
new XmlNodePrinter(new PrintWriter(stringWriter)).print(node)
println stringWriter.toString()

Usage from Java if groovy jar is in classpath

  String xml = "<tag><nested>hello</nested></tag>";
  StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
  Node node = new XmlParser().parseText(xml);
  new XmlNodePrinter(new PrintWriter(stringWriter)).print(node);
  System.out.println(stringWriter.toString());

Answer 2

Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
//initialize StreamResult with File object to save to file
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(new StringWriter());
DOMSource source = new DOMSource(doc);
transformer.transform(source, result);
String xmlString = result.getWriter().toString();
System.out.println(xmlString);

Note: Results may vary depending on the Java version. Search for workarounds specific to your platform.

Answer 3

All above solutions didn't work for me, then I found this http://myshittycode.com/2014/02/10/java-properly-indenting-xml-string/

The clue is remove whitespaces with XPath

    String xml = "<root>" +
             "\n   " +
             "\n<name>Coco Puff</name>" +
             "\n        <total>10</total>    </root>";

try {
    Document document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance()
            .newDocumentBuilder()
            .parse(new InputSource(new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes("utf-8"))));

    XPath xPath = XPathFactory.newInstance().newXPath();
    NodeList nodeList = (NodeList) xPath.evaluate("//text()[normalize-space()='']",
                                                  document,
                                                  XPathConstants.NODESET);

    for (int i = 0; i < nodeList.getLength(); ++i) {
        Node node = nodeList.item(i);
        node.getParentNode().removeChild(node);
    }

    Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
    transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-8");
    transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
    transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
    transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "4");

    StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
    StreamResult streamResult = new StreamResult(stringWriter);

    transformer.transform(new DOMSource(document), streamResult);

    System.out.println(stringWriter.toString());
}
catch (Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Answer 4

Now it's 2012 and Java can do more than it used to with XML, I'd like to add an alternative to my accepted answer. This has no dependencies outside of Java 6.

import org.w3c.dom.Node;
import org.w3c.dom.bootstrap.DOMImplementationRegistry;
import org.w3c.dom.ls.DOMImplementationLS;
import org.w3c.dom.ls.LSSerializer;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import java.io.StringReader;

/**
 * Pretty-prints xml, supplied as a string.
 * <p/>
 * eg.
 * <code>
 * String formattedXml = new XmlFormatter().format("<tag><nested>hello</nested></tag>");
 * </code>
 */
public class XmlFormatter {

    public String format(String xml) {

        try {
            final InputSource src = new InputSource(new StringReader(xml));
            final Node document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(src).getDocumentElement();
            final Boolean keepDeclaration = Boolean.valueOf(xml.startsWith("<?xml"));

        //May need this: System.setProperty(DOMImplementationRegistry.PROPERTY,"com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.dom.DOMImplementationSourceImpl");


            final DOMImplementationRegistry registry = DOMImplementationRegistry.newInstance();
            final DOMImplementationLS impl = (DOMImplementationLS) registry.getDOMImplementation("LS");
            final LSSerializer writer = impl.createLSSerializer();

            writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("format-pretty-print", Boolean.TRUE); // Set this to true if the output needs to be beautified.
            writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("xml-declaration", keepDeclaration); // Set this to true if the declaration is needed to be outputted.

            return writer.writeToString(document);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            throw new RuntimeException(e);
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String unformattedXml =
                "<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><QueryMessage\n" +
                        "        xmlns=\"http://www.SDMX.org/resources/SDMXML/schemas/v2_0/message\"\n" +
                        "        xmlns:query=\"http://www.SDMX.org/resources/SDMXML/schemas/v2_0/query\">\n" +
                        "    <Query>\n" +
                        "        <query:CategorySchemeWhere>\n" +
                        "   \t\t\t\t\t         <query:AgencyID>ECB\n\n\n\n</query:AgencyID>\n" +
                        "        </query:CategorySchemeWhere>\n" +
                        "    </Query>\n\n\n\n\n" +
                        "</QueryMessage>";

        System.out.println(new XmlFormatter().format(unformattedXml));
    }
}

Answer 5

In case you do not need indentation that much but a few line breaks, it could be sufficient to simply regex...

String leastPrettifiedXml = uglyXml.replaceAll("><", ">\n<");

The code is nice, not the result because of missing indentation.

---

(For solutions with indentation, see other answers.)

Answer 6

If you're sure that you have a valid XML, this one is simple, and avoids XML DOM trees. Maybe has some bugs, do comment if you see anything

public String prettyPrint(String xml) {
            if (xml == null || xml.trim().length() == 0) return "";

            int stack = 0;
            StringBuilder pretty = new StringBuilder();
            String[] rows = xml.trim().replaceAll(">", ">\n").replaceAll("<", "\n<").split("\n");

            for (int i = 0; i < rows.length; i++) {
                    if (rows[i] == null || rows[i].trim().length() == 0) continue;

                    String row = rows[i].trim();
                    if (row.startsWith("<?")) {
                            // xml version tag
                            pretty.append(row + "\n");
                    } else if (row.startsWith("</")) {
                            // closing tag
                            String indent = repeatString("    ", --stack);
                            pretty.append(indent + row + "\n");
                    } else if (row.startsWith("<")) {
                            // starting tag
                            String indent = repeatString("    ", stack++);
                            pretty.append(indent + row + "\n");
                    } else {
                            // tag data
                            String indent = repeatString("    ", stack);
                            pretty.append(indent + row + "\n");
                    }
            }

            return pretty.toString().trim();
    }