CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaxmlpretty-print
Steve McLeod
Steve McLeod

Reputation: 52448

How to pretty print XML from Java?

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>

Upvotes: 507

Views: 568939

Answers (30)

Kevin Hakanson
Kevin Hakanson

Reputation: 42200

Since you are starting with a String, you can convert to a DOM object (e.g. Node) before you 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));
}

Upvotes: 17

Lorenzo Boccaccia
Lorenzo Boccaccia

Reputation: 6131

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.

Upvotes: 310

Valentyn Kolesnikov
Valentyn Kolesnikov

Reputation: 2097

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>

Upvotes: 1

dfa
dfa

Reputation: 116304

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

Upvotes: 146

anjanb
anjanb

Reputation: 13847

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

Upvotes: 1

Faisal K
Faisal K

Reputation: 1

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());
}

Upvotes: -1

Benson Githinji
Benson Githinji

Reputation: 579

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;
}

Upvotes: 2

bharg
bharg

Reputation: 71

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();

}

Upvotes: 6

Steve T
Steve T

Reputation: 383

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");
    }
}

Upvotes: -1

Sireesh Yarlagadda
Sireesh Yarlagadda

Reputation: 13716

Try this:

 try
                    {
                        TransformerFactory transFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
                        Transformer transformer = null;
                        transformer = transFactory.newTransformer();
                        StringWriter buffer = new StringWriter();
                        transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
                        transformer.transform(new DOMSource(element),
                                  new StreamResult(buffer)); 
                        String str = buffer.toString();
                        System.out.println("XML INSIDE IS #########################################"+str);
                        return element;
                    }
                    catch (TransformerConfigurationException e)
                    {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                    }
                    catch (TransformerException e)
                    {
                        e.printStackTrace();
                    }

Upvotes: -1

maks tkach
maks tkach

Reputation: 61

This code below working perfectly

import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;

String formattedXml1 = prettyFormat("<root><child>aaa</child><child/></root>");

public static String prettyFormat(String input) {
    return prettyFormat(input, "2");
}

public static String prettyFormat(String input, String indent) {
    Source xmlInput = new StreamSource(new StringReader(input));
    StringWriter stringWriter = new StringWriter();
    try {
        TransformerFactory transformerFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        Transformer transformer = transformerFactory.newTransformer();
        transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
        transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", indent);
        transformer.transform(xmlInput, new StreamResult(stringWriter));

        String pretty = stringWriter.toString();
        pretty = pretty.replace("\r\n", "\n");
        return pretty;              
    } catch (Exception e) {
        throw new RuntimeException(e);
    }
}

Upvotes: 6

ThomasRS
ThomasRS

Reputation: 8287

As an alternative to the answers from max, codeskraps, David Easley and milosmns, have a look at my lightweight, high-performance pretty-printer library: xml-formatter

// construct lightweight, threadsafe, instance
PrettyPrinter prettyPrinter = PrettyPrinterBuilder.newPrettyPrinter().build();

StringBuilder buffer = new StringBuilder();
String xml = ..; // also works with char[] or Reader

if(prettyPrinter.process(xml, buffer)) {
     // valid XML, print buffer
} else {
     // invalid XML, print xml
}

Sometimes, like when running mocked SOAP services directly from file, it is good to have a pretty-printer which also handles already pretty-printed XML:

PrettyPrinter prettyPrinter = PrettyPrinterBuilder.newPrettyPrinter().ignoreWhitespace().build();

As some have commented, pretty-printing is just a way of presenting XML in a more human-readable form - whitespace strictly does not belong in your XML data.

The library is intended for pretty-printing for logging purposes, and also includes functions for filtering (subtree removal / anonymization) and pretty-printing of XML in CDATA and Text nodes.

Upvotes: 3

Anand
Anand

Reputation: 1871

Just another solution which works for us

import java.io.StringWriter;
import org.dom4j.DocumentHelper;
import org.dom4j.io.OutputFormat;
import org.dom4j.io.XMLWriter;

**
 * Pretty Print XML String
 * 
 * @param inputXmlString
 * @return
 */
public static String prettyPrintXml(String xml) {

    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();
}

Upvotes: 5

codeskraps
codeskraps

Reputation: 1501

slightly improved version from milosmns...

public static String getPrettyXml(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("<?")) {
            pretty.append(row + "\n");
        } else if (row.startsWith("</")) {
            String indent = repeatString(--stack);
            pretty.append(indent + row + "\n");
        } else if (row.startsWith("<") && row.endsWith("/>") == false) {
            String indent = repeatString(stack++);
            pretty.append(indent + row + "\n");
            if (row.endsWith("]]>")) stack--;
        } else {
            String indent = repeatString(stack);
            pretty.append(indent + row + "\n");
        }
    }

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

private static String repeatString(int stack) {
     StringBuilder indent = new StringBuilder();
     for (int i = 0; i < stack; i++) {
        indent.append(" ");
     }
     return indent.toString();
}

Upvotes: 8

comonad
comonad

Reputation: 5241

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.)

Upvotes: 0

BijanE
BijanE

Reputation: 99

Using jdom2 : http://www.jdom.org/

import java.io.StringReader;
import org.jdom2.input.SAXBuilder;
import org.jdom2.output.Format;
import org.jdom2.output.XMLOutputter;

String prettyXml = new XMLOutputter(Format.getPrettyFormat()).
                         outputString(new SAXBuilder().build(new StringReader(uglyXml)));

Upvotes: 4

Georgy Gobozov
Georgy Gobozov

Reputation: 13721

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();
}

Upvotes: 6

vsnyc
vsnyc

Reputation: 2257

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());

Upvotes: 1

max
max

Reputation: 1266

For those searching for a quick and dirty solution - which doesn't need the XML to be 100% valid. e.g. in case of REST / SOAP logging (you never know what the others send ;-))

I found and advanced a code snipped I found online which I think is still missing here as a valid possible approach: 

public static String prettyPrintXMLAsString(String xmlString) {
    /* Remove new lines */
    final String LINE_BREAK = "\n";
    xmlString = xmlString.replaceAll(LINE_BREAK, "");
    StringBuffer prettyPrintXml = new StringBuffer();
    /* Group the xml tags */
    Pattern pattern = Pattern.compile("(<[^/][^>]+>)?([^<]*)(</[^>]+>)?(<[^/][^>]+/>)?");
    Matcher matcher = pattern.matcher(xmlString);
    int tabCount = 0;
    while (matcher.find()) {
        String str1 = (null == matcher.group(1) || "null".equals(matcher.group())) ? "" : matcher.group(1);
        String str2 = (null == matcher.group(2) || "null".equals(matcher.group())) ? "" : matcher.group(2);
        String str3 = (null == matcher.group(3) || "null".equals(matcher.group())) ? "" : matcher.group(3);
        String str4 = (null == matcher.group(4) || "null".equals(matcher.group())) ? "" : matcher.group(4);

        if (matcher.group() != null && !matcher.group().trim().equals("")) {
            printTabs(tabCount, prettyPrintXml);
            if (!str1.equals("") && str3.equals("")) {
                ++tabCount;
            }
            if (str1.equals("") && !str3.equals("")) {
                --tabCount;
                prettyPrintXml.deleteCharAt(prettyPrintXml.length() - 1);
            }

            prettyPrintXml.append(str1);
            prettyPrintXml.append(str2);
            prettyPrintXml.append(str3);
            if (!str4.equals("")) {
                prettyPrintXml.append(LINE_BREAK);
                printTabs(tabCount, prettyPrintXml);
                prettyPrintXml.append(str4);
            }
            prettyPrintXml.append(LINE_BREAK);
        }
    }
    return prettyPrintXml.toString();
}

private static void printTabs(int count, StringBuffer stringBuffer) {
    for (int i = 0; i < count; i++) {
        stringBuffer.append("\t");
    }
}

public static void main(String[] args) {
    String x = new String(
            "<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap=\"http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/\"><soap:Body><soap:Fault><faultcode>soap:Client</faultcode><faultstring>INVALID_MESSAGE</faultstring><detail><ns3:XcbSoapFault xmlns=\"\" xmlns:ns3=\"http://www.someapp.eu/xcb/types/xcb/v1\"><CauseCode>20007</CauseCode><CauseText>INVALID_MESSAGE</CauseText><DebugInfo>Problems creating SAAJ object model</DebugInfo></ns3:XcbSoapFault></detail></soap:Fault></soap:Body></soap:Envelope>");
    System.out.println(prettyPrintXMLAsString(x));
}

here is the output:

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">
  <soap:Body>
    <soap:Fault>
        <faultcode>soap:Client</faultcode>
        <faultstring>INVALID_MESSAGE</faultstring>
        <detail>
            <ns3:XcbSoapFault xmlns="" xmlns:ns3="http://www.someapp.eu/xcb/types/xcb/v1">
                <CauseCode>20007</CauseCode>
                <CauseText>INVALID_MESSAGE</CauseText>
                <DebugInfo>Problems creating SAAJ object model</DebugInfo>
            </ns3:XcbSoapFault>
        </detail>
    </soap:Fault>
  </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>

Upvotes: 1

Wojtek
Wojtek

Reputation: 1530

The solutions I have found here for Java 1.6+ do not reformat the code if it is already formatted. The one that worked for me (and re-formatted already formatted code) was the following.

import org.apache.xml.security.c14n.CanonicalizationException;
import org.apache.xml.security.c14n.Canonicalizer;
import org.apache.xml.security.c14n.InvalidCanonicalizerException;
import org.w3c.dom.Element;
import org.w3c.dom.bootstrap.DOMImplementationRegistry;
import org.w3c.dom.ls.DOMImplementationLS;
import org.w3c.dom.ls.LSSerializer;
import org.xml.sax.InputSource;
import org.xml.sax.SAXException;

import javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory;
import javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.StringReader;

public class XmlUtils {
    public static String toCanonicalXml(String xml) throws InvalidCanonicalizerException, ParserConfigurationException, SAXException, CanonicalizationException, IOException {
        Canonicalizer canon = Canonicalizer.getInstance(Canonicalizer.ALGO_ID_C14N_OMIT_COMMENTS);
        byte canonXmlBytes[] = canon.canonicalize(xml.getBytes());
        return new String(canonXmlBytes);
    }

    public static String prettyFormat(String input) throws TransformerException, ParserConfigurationException, IOException, SAXException, InstantiationException, IllegalAccessException, ClassNotFoundException {
        InputSource src = new InputSource(new StringReader(input));
        Element document = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse(src).getDocumentElement();
        Boolean keepDeclaration = input.startsWith("<?xml");
        DOMImplementationRegistry registry = DOMImplementationRegistry.newInstance();
        DOMImplementationLS impl = (DOMImplementationLS) registry.getDOMImplementation("LS");
        LSSerializer writer = impl.createLSSerializer();
        writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("format-pretty-print", Boolean.TRUE);
        writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("xml-declaration", keepDeclaration);
        return writer.writeToString(document);
    }
}

It is a good tool to use in your unit tests for full-string xml comparison. 

private void assertXMLEqual(String expected, String actual) throws ParserConfigurationException, IOException, SAXException, CanonicalizationException, InvalidCanonicalizerException, TransformerException, IllegalAccessException, ClassNotFoundException, InstantiationException {
    String canonicalExpected = prettyFormat(toCanonicalXml(expected));
    String canonicalActual = prettyFormat(toCanonicalXml(actual));
    assertEquals(canonicalExpected, canonicalActual);
}

Upvotes: 1

milosmns
milosmns

Reputation: 3783

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();
    }

Upvotes: 5

Sandeep Phukan
Sandeep Phukan

Reputation: 117

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 ...

Upvotes: 10

Steve McLeod
Steve McLeod

Reputation: 52448

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));
    }
}

Upvotes: 110

JFK
JFK

Reputation: 1677

I have found that in Java 1.6.0_32 the normal method to pretty print an XML string (using a Transformer with a null or identity xslt) does not behave as I would like if tags are merely separated by whitespace, as opposed to having no separating text. I tried using <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> in my template to no avail. The simplest solution I found was to strip the space the way I wanted using a SAXSource and XML filter. Since my solution was for logging I also extended this to work with incomplete XML fragments. Note the normal method seems to work fine if you use a DOMSource but I did not want to use this because of the incompleteness and memory overhead. 

public static class WhitespaceIgnoreFilter extends XMLFilterImpl
{

    @Override
    public void ignorableWhitespace(char[] arg0,
                                    int arg1,
                                    int arg2) throws SAXException
    {
        //Ignore it then...
    }

    @Override
    public void characters( char[] ch,
                            int start,
                            int length) throws SAXException
    {
        if (!new String(ch, start, length).trim().equals("")) 
               super.characters(ch, start, length); 
    }
}

public static String prettyXML(String logMsg, boolean allowBadlyFormedFragments) throws SAXException, IOException, TransformerException
    {
        TransformerFactory transFactory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
        transFactory.setAttribute("indent-number", new Integer(2));
        Transformer transformer = transFactory.newTransformer();
        transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
        transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "4");
        StringWriter out = new StringWriter();
        XMLReader masterParser = SAXHelper.getSAXParser(true);
        XMLFilter parser = new WhitespaceIgnoreFilter();
        parser.setParent(masterParser);

        if(allowBadlyFormedFragments)
        {
            transformer.setErrorListener(new ErrorListener()
            {
                @Override
                public void warning(TransformerException exception) throws TransformerException
                {
                }

                @Override
                public void fatalError(TransformerException exception) throws TransformerException
                {
                }

                @Override
                public void error(TransformerException exception) throws TransformerException
                {
                }
            });
        }

        try
        {
            transformer.transform(new SAXSource(parser, new InputSource(new StringReader(logMsg))), new StreamResult(out));
        }
        catch (TransformerException e)
        {
            if(e.getCause() != null && e.getCause() instanceof SAXParseException)
            {
                if(!allowBadlyFormedFragments || !"XML document structures must start and end within the same entity.".equals(e.getCause().getMessage()))
                {
                    throw e;
                }
            }
            else
            {
                throw e;
            }
        }
        out.flush();
        return out.toString();
    }

Upvotes: 2

Michael
Michael

Reputation: 35331

Just for future reference, here's a solution that worked for me (thanks to a comment that @George Hawkins posted in one of the answers):

DOMImplementationRegistry registry = DOMImplementationRegistry.newInstance();
DOMImplementationLS impl = (DOMImplementationLS) registry.getDOMImplementation("LS");
LSSerializer writer = impl.createLSSerializer();
writer.getDomConfig().setParameter("format-pretty-print", Boolean.TRUE);
LSOutput output = impl.createLSOutput();
ByteArrayOutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
output.setByteStream(out);
writer.write(document, output);
String xmlStr = new String(out.toByteArray());

Upvotes: 8

Mark Pope
Mark Pope

Reputation: 11264

Here's a way of doing it using dom4j:

Imports:

import org.dom4j.Document;  
import org.dom4j.DocumentHelper;  
import org.dom4j.io.OutputFormat;  
import org.dom4j.io.XMLWriter;

Code: 

String xml = "<your xml='here'/>";  
Document doc = DocumentHelper.parseText(xml);  
StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();  
OutputFormat format = OutputFormat.createPrettyPrint();  
XMLWriter xw = new XMLWriter(sw, format);  
xw.write(doc);  
String result = sw.toString();

Upvotes: 19

Synesso
Synesso

Reputation: 38948

Using scala:

import xml._
val xml = XML.loadString("<tag><nested>hello</nested></tag>")
val formatted = new PrettyPrinter(150, 2).format(xml)
println(formatted)

You can do this in Java too, if you depend on the scala-library.jar. It looks like this:

import scala.xml.*;

public class FormatXML {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        String unformattedXml = "<tag><nested>hello</nested></tag>";
        PrettyPrinter pp = new PrettyPrinter(150, 3);
        String formatted = pp.format(XML.loadString(unformattedXml), TopScope$.MODULE$);
        System.out.println(formatted);
    }
}

The PrettyPrinter object is constructed with two ints, the first being max line length and the second being the indentation step.

Upvotes: 9

khylo
khylo

Reputation: 4490

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 https://bugs.java.com/bugdatabase/view_bug?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;
        }
    }

}

Upvotes: 54

Kristoffer Lindvall
Kristoffer Lindvall

Reputation: 2682

I had the same problem and I'm having great success with JTidy (http://jtidy.sourceforge.net/index.html)

Example:

Tidy t = new Tidy();
t.setIndentContent(true);
Document d = t.parseDOM(
    new ByteArrayInputStream("HTML goes here", null);

OutputStream out = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
t.pprint(d, out);
String html = out.toString();

Upvotes: 2

David Easley
David Easley

Reputation: 1385

Kevin Hakanson said: "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."

Agreed. Such an approach is much faster and has far fewer dependencies.

Example solution:

/**
 * XML utils, including formatting.
 */
public class XmlUtils
{
  private static XmlFormatter formatter = new XmlFormatter(2, 80);

  public static String formatXml(String s)
  {
    return formatter.format(s, 0);
  }

  public static String formatXml(String s, int initialIndent)
  {
    return formatter.format(s, initialIndent);
  }

  private static class XmlFormatter
  {
    private int indentNumChars;
    private int lineLength;
    private boolean singleLine;

    public XmlFormatter(int indentNumChars, int lineLength)
    {
      this.indentNumChars = indentNumChars;
      this.lineLength = lineLength;
    }

    public synchronized String format(String s, int initialIndent)
    {
      int indent = initialIndent;
      StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
      for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++)
      {
        char currentChar = s.charAt(i);
        if (currentChar == '<')
        {
          char nextChar = s.charAt(i + 1);
          if (nextChar == '/')
            indent -= indentNumChars;
          if (!singleLine)   // Don't indent before closing element if we're creating opening and closing elements on a single line.
            sb.append(buildWhitespace(indent));
          if (nextChar != '?' && nextChar != '!' && nextChar != '/')
            indent += indentNumChars;
          singleLine = false;  // Reset flag.
        }
        sb.append(currentChar);
        if (currentChar == '>')
        {
          if (s.charAt(i - 1) == '/')
          {
            indent -= indentNumChars;
            sb.append("\n");
          }
          else
          {
            int nextStartElementPos = s.indexOf('<', i);
            if (nextStartElementPos > i + 1)
            {
              String textBetweenElements = s.substring(i + 1, nextStartElementPos);

              // If the space between elements is solely newlines, let them through to preserve additional newlines in source document.
              if (textBetweenElements.replaceAll("\n", "").length() == 0)
              {
                sb.append(textBetweenElements + "\n");
              }
              // Put tags and text on a single line if the text is short.
              else if (textBetweenElements.length() <= lineLength * 0.5)
              {
                sb.append(textBetweenElements);
                singleLine = true;
              }
              // For larger amounts of text, wrap lines to a maximum line length.
              else
              {
                sb.append("\n" + lineWrap(textBetweenElements, lineLength, indent, null) + "\n");
              }
              i = nextStartElementPos - 1;
            }
            else
            {
              sb.append("\n");
            }
          }
        }
      }
      return sb.toString();
    }
  }

  private static String buildWhitespace(int numChars)
  {
    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    for (int i = 0; i < numChars; i++)
      sb.append(" ");
    return sb.toString();
  }

  /**
   * Wraps the supplied text to the specified line length.
   * @lineLength the maximum length of each line in the returned string (not including indent if specified).
   * @indent optional number of whitespace characters to prepend to each line before the text.
   * @linePrefix optional string to append to the indent (before the text).
   * @returns the supplied text wrapped so that no line exceeds the specified line length + indent, optionally with
   * indent and prefix applied to each line.
   */
  private static String lineWrap(String s, int lineLength, Integer indent, String linePrefix)
  {
    if (s == null)
      return null;

    StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
    int lineStartPos = 0;
    int lineEndPos;
    boolean firstLine = true;
    while(lineStartPos < s.length())
    {
      if (!firstLine)
        sb.append("\n");
      else
        firstLine = false;

      if (lineStartPos + lineLength > s.length())
        lineEndPos = s.length() - 1;
      else
      {
        lineEndPos = lineStartPos + lineLength - 1;
        while (lineEndPos > lineStartPos && (s.charAt(lineEndPos) != ' ' && s.charAt(lineEndPos) != '\t'))
          lineEndPos--;
      }
      sb.append(buildWhitespace(indent));
      if (linePrefix != null)
        sb.append(linePrefix);

      sb.append(s.substring(lineStartPos, lineEndPos + 1));
      lineStartPos = lineEndPos + 1;
    }
    return sb.toString();
  }

  // other utils removed for brevity
}

Upvotes: 15

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