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>
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.
Here's an answer to my own question. I combined the answers from the various results to write a class that pretty prints XML.
No guarantees on how it responds with invalid XML or large documents.
package ecb.sdw.pretty;
import org.apache.xml.serialize.OutputFormat;
import org.apache.xml.serialize.XMLSerializer;
import org.w3c.dom.Document;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilder;
import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StringReader;
import java.io.StringWriter;
import java.io.Writer;
/**
* 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 XmlFormatter() {
}
public String format(String unformattedXml) {
try {
final Document document = parseXmlFile(unformattedXml);
OutputFormat format = new OutputFormat(document);
format.setLineWidth(65);
format.setIndenting(true);
format.setIndent(2);
Writer out = new StringWriter();
XMLSerializer serializer = new XMLSerializer(out, format);
serializer.serialize(document);
return out.toString();
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
}
}
private Document parseXmlFile(String in) {
try {
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
InputSource is = new InputSource(new StringReader(in));
return db.parse(is);
} catch (ParserConfigurationException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
} catch (SAXException e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e);
} catch (IOException 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));
}
}
a simpler solution based on this answer:
public static String prettyFormat(String input, int indent) {
try {
Source xmlInput = new StreamSource(new StringReader(input));
StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
StreamResult xmlOutput = new StreamResult(stringWriter);
TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
transformerFactory.setAttribute("indent-number", indent);
transformerFactory.setAttribute(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_DTD, "");
transformerFactory.setAttribute(XMLConstants.ACCESS_EXTERNAL_STYLESHEET, "");
Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
transformer.transform(xmlInput, xmlOutput);
return xmlOutput.getWriter().toString();
} catch (Exception e) {
throw new RuntimeException(e); // simple exception handling, please review it
}
}
public static String prettyFormat(String input) {
return prettyFormat(input, 2);
}
testcase:
prettyFormat("<root><child>aaa</child><child/></root>");
returns:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<child>aaa</child>
<child/>
</root>
//Ignore: Original edit just needs missing s in the Class name in code. redundant six characters added to get over 6 characters validation on SO
Just to note that top rated answer requires the use of xerces.
If you don't want to add this external dependency then you can simply use the standard jdk libraries (which actually are built using xerces internally).
N.B. There was a bug with jdk version 1.5 see http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6296446 but it is resolved now.,
(Note if an error occurs this will return the original text)
package com.test;
import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXSource;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXTransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
public class XmlTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
XmlTest t = new XmlTest();
System.out.println(t.formatXml("<a><b><c/><d>text D</d><e value='0'/></b></a>"));
}
public String formatXml(String xml){
try{
Transformer serializer= SAXTransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
serializer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
//serializer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
serializer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
//serializer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.customer.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
Source xmlSource=new SAXSource(new InputSource(new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes())));
StreamResult res = new StreamResult(new ByteArrayOutputStream());
serializer.transform(xmlSource, res);
return new String(((ByteArrayOutputStream)res.getOutputStream()).toByteArray());
}catch(Exception e){
//TODO log error
return xml;
}
}
}
I've pretty printed in the past using the org.dom4j.io.OutputFormat.createPrettyPrint() method
public String prettyPrint(final String xml){
if (StringUtils.isBlank(xml)) {
throw new RuntimeException("xml was null or blank in prettyPrint()");
}
final StringWriter sw;
try {
final OutputFormat format = OutputFormat.createPrettyPrint();
final org.dom4j.Document document = DocumentHelper.parseText(xml);
sw = new StringWriter();
final XMLWriter writer = new XMLWriter(sw, format);
writer.write(document);
}
catch (Exception e) {
throw new RuntimeException("Error pretty printing xml:\n" + xml, e);
}
return sw.toString();
}
Since you are starting with a String, you need to covert to a DOM object (e.g. Node) before you can use the Transformer. However, if you know your XML string is valid, and you don't want to incur the memory overhead of parsing a string into a DOM, then running a transform over the DOM to get a string back - you could just do some old fashioned character by character parsing. Insert a newline and spaces after every </...> characters, keep and indent counter (to determine the number of spaces) that you increment for every <...> and decrement for every </...> you see.
Disclaimer - I did a cut/paste/text edit of the functions below, so they may not compile as is.
public static final Element createDOM(String strXML)
throws ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, IOException {
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
dbf.setValidating(true);
DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
InputSource sourceXML = new InputSource(new StringReader(strXML));
Document xmlDoc = db.parse(sourceXML);
Element e = xmlDoc.getDocumentElement();
e.normalize();
return e;
}
public static final void prettyPrint(Node xml, OutputStream out)
throws TransformerConfigurationException, TransformerFactoryConfigurationError, TransformerException {
Transformer tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
tf.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
tf.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-8");
tf.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
tf.transform(new DOMSource(xml), new StreamResult(out));
}
If using a 3rd party XML library is ok, you can get away with something significantly simpler than what the currently highest-voted answers suggest.
It was stated that both input and output should be Strings, so here's a utility method that does just that, implemented with the XOM library:
import nu.xom.*;
import java.io.*;
[...]
public static String format(String xml) throws ParsingException, IOException {
ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
Serializer serializer = new Serializer(out);
serializer.setIndent(4); // or whatever you like
serializer.write(new Builder().build(xml, ""));
return out.toString("UTF-8");
}
I tested that it works, and the results do not depend on your JRE version or anything like that. To see how to customise the output format to your liking, take a look at the Serializer API.
This actually came out longer than I thought - some extra lines were needed because Serializer wants an OutputStream to write to. But note that there's very little code for actual XML twiddling here.
(This answer is part of my evaluation of XOM, which was suggested as one option in my question about the best Java XML library to replace dom4j. For the record, with dom4j you could achieve this with similar ease using XMLWriter and OutputFormat. Edit: ...as demonstrated in mlo55's answer.)
Hmmm... faced something like this and it is a known bug ... just add this OutputProperty ..
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputPropertiesFactory.S_KEY_INDENT_AMOUNT, "8");
Hope this helps ...
Regarding comment that "you must first build a DOM tree": No, you need not and should not do that.
Instead, create a StreamSource (new StreamSource(new StringReader(str)), and feed that to the identity transformer mentioned. That'll use SAX parser, and result will be much faster. Building an intermediate tree is pure overhead for this case. Otherwise the top-ranked answer is good.
I mix all of them and writing one small program. It is reading from the xml file and printing out. Just Instead of xzy give your file path.
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
DocumentBuilderFactory dbf = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
dbf.setValidating(false);
DocumentBuilder db = dbf.newDocumentBuilder();
Document doc = db.parse(new FileInputStream(new File("C:/Users/xyz.xml")));
prettyPrint(doc);
}
private static String prettyPrint(Document document)
throws TransformerException {
TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory
.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.ENCODING, "UTF-8");
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "no");
DOMSource source = new DOMSource(document);
StringWriter strWriter = new StringWriter();
StreamResult result = new StreamResult(strWriter);transformer.transform(source, result);
System.out.println(strWriter.getBuffer().toString());
return strWriter.getBuffer().toString();
}
I always use the below function:
public static String prettyPrintXml(String xmlStringToBeFormatted) {
String formattedXmlString = null;
try {
DocumentBuilderFactory documentBuilderFactory = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance();
documentBuilderFactory.setValidating(true);
DocumentBuilder documentBuilder = documentBuilderFactory.newDocumentBuilder();
InputSource inputSource = new InputSource(new StringReader(xmlStringToBeFormatted));
Document document = documentBuilder.parse(inputSource);
Transformer transformer = TransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
StreamResult streamResult = new StreamResult(new StringWriter());
DOMSource dOMSource = new DOMSource(document);
transformer.transform(dOMSource, streamResult);
formattedXmlString = streamResult.getWriter().toString().trim();
} catch (Exception ex) {
StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
ex.printStackTrace(new PrintWriter(sw));
System.err.println(sw.toString());
}
return formattedXmlString;
}
There is a very nice command line XML utility called xmlstarlet(http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) that can do a lot of things which a lot of people use.
You could execute this program programmatically using Runtime.exec and then read in the formatted output file. It has more options and better error reporting than a few lines of Java code can provide.
download xmlstarlet : http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=66612&package_id=64589
Underscore-java has static method U.formatXml(string). Live example
import com.github.underscore.U;
public class MyClass {
public static void main(String args[]) {
String xml = "<tag><nested>hello</nested></tag>";
System.out.println(U.formatXml("<?xml version=\"1.0\" encoding=\"UTF-8\"?><root>" + xml + "</root>"));
}
}
Output:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<root>
<tag>
<nested>hello</nested>
</tag>
</root>
I should have looked for this page first before coming up with my own solution! Anyway, mine uses Java recursion to parse the xml page. This code is totally self-contained and does not rely on third party libraries. Also .. it uses recursion!
// you call this method passing in the xml text
public static void prettyPrint(String text){
prettyPrint(text, 0);
}
// "index" corresponds to the number of levels of nesting and/or the number of tabs to print before printing the tag
public static void prettyPrint(String xmlText, int index){
boolean foundTagStart = false;
StringBuilder tagChars = new StringBuilder();
String startTag = "";
String endTag = "";
String[] chars = xmlText.split("");
// find the next start tag
for(String ch : chars){
if(ch.equalsIgnoreCase("<")){
tagChars.append(ch);
foundTagStart = true;
} else if(ch.equalsIgnoreCase(">") && foundTagStart){
startTag = tagChars.append(ch).toString();
String tempTag = startTag;
endTag = (tempTag.contains("\"") ? (tempTag.split(" ")[0] + ">") : tempTag).replace("<", "</"); // <startTag attr1=1 attr2=2> => </startTag>
break;
} else if(foundTagStart){
tagChars.append(ch);
}
}
// once start and end tag are calculated, print start tag, then content, then end tag
if(foundTagStart){
int startIndex = xmlText.indexOf(startTag);
int endIndex = xmlText.indexOf(endTag);
// handle if matching tags NOT found
if((startIndex < 0) || (endIndex < 0)){
if(startIndex < 0) {
// no start tag found
return;
} else {
// start tag found, no end tag found (handles single tags aka "<mytag/>" or "<?xml ...>")
printTabs(index);
System.out.println(startTag);
// move on to the next tag
// NOTE: "index" (not index+1) because next tag is on same level as this one
prettyPrint(xmlText.substring(startIndex+startTag.length(), xmlText.length()), index);
return;
}
// handle when matching tags found
} else {
String content = xmlText.substring(startIndex+startTag.length(), endIndex);
boolean isTagContainsTags = content.contains("<"); // content contains tags
printTabs(index);
if(isTagContainsTags){ // ie: <tag1><tag2>stuff</tag2></tag1>
System.out.println(startTag);
prettyPrint(content, index+1); // "index+1" because "content" is nested
printTabs(index);
} else {
System.out.print(startTag); // ie: <tag1>stuff</tag1> or <tag1></tag1>
System.out.print(content);
}
System.out.println(endTag);
int nextIndex = endIndex + endTag.length();
if(xmlText.length() > nextIndex){ // if there are more tags on this level, continue
prettyPrint(xmlText.substring(nextIndex, xmlText.length()), index);
}
}
} else {
System.out.print(xmlText);
}
}
private static void printTabs(int counter){
while(counter-- > 0){
System.out.print("\t");
}
}
I was trying to achieve something similar, but without any external dependency. The application was already using DOM to format just for logging the XMLs!
Here is my sample snippet
public void formatXML(final String unformattedXML) {
final int length = unformattedXML.length();
final int indentSpace = 3;
final StringBuilder newString = new StringBuilder(length + length / 10);
final char space = ' ';
int i = 0;
int indentCount = 0;
char currentChar = unformattedXML.charAt(i++);
char previousChar = currentChar;
boolean nodeStarted = true;
newString.append(currentChar);
for (; i < length - 1;) {
currentChar = unformattedXML.charAt(i++);
if(((int) currentChar < 33) && !nodeStarted) {
continue;
}
switch (currentChar) {
case '<':
if ('>' == previousChar && '/' != unformattedXML.charAt(i - 1) && '/' != unformattedXML.charAt(i) && '!' != unformattedXML.charAt(i)) {
indentCount++;
}
newString.append(System.lineSeparator());
for (int j = indentCount * indentSpace; j > 0; j--) {
newString.append(space);
}
newString.append(currentChar);
nodeStarted = true;
break;
case '>':
newString.append(currentChar);
nodeStarted = false;
break;
case '/':
if ('<' == previousChar || '>' == unformattedXML.charAt(i)) {
indentCount--;
}
newString.append(currentChar);
break;
default:
newString.append(currentChar);
}
previousChar = currentChar;
}
newString.append(unformattedXML.charAt(length - 1));
System.out.println(newString.toString());
}