An XML viewer takes a wall of unreadable markup and lays it out as clean, indented, collapsible structure so you can actually read it. Paste your XML, see it pretty-printed in seconds, and catch any errors before they trip up your code. Here is how to format XML and what to look for.
What an XML viewer does
Raw XML often arrives as one long line with no spacing, which is almost impossible to scan by eye. A viewer fixes that by:
- Formatting with indentation: every element is nested and aligned so the document tree is obvious at a glance.
- Collapsible nodes: expand and collapse branches to focus on the part you care about and hide the rest.
- Well-formedness checks: it flags problems like unclosed tags or mismatched elements, so you find the broken bit instead of guessing.
That last point matters. A single missing closing tag can break a whole feed, and the error is far easier to spot when the structure is laid out cleanly.
When you reach for it
XML is everywhere once you start looking. A viewer helps any time you need to read or debug it:
- Inspecting a sitemap before submitting it to search engines.
- Reading an RSS or Atom feed to check items and dates.
- Debugging a SOAP response from an API.
- Reviewing config files in XML format.
In all of these, the goal is the same: turn machine-formatted markup into something a human can follow.
How to format XML in two steps
- Open the XML Viewer & Formatter and paste your XML into the input.
- Read the pretty-printed output, expand or collapse nodes as needed, and watch for any well-formedness warnings.
The XML Viewer & Formatter runs entirely in your browser. Your data never leaves your device and nothing is uploaded to a server, which keeps private config files and API responses safe.
Related tools
- Need the data as rows instead? Use the XML to JSON Converter to turn XML into JSON your code can parse.
- Working with spreadsheet data? CSV to JSON Converter handles the same job for CSV.
- Going the other way? JSON to CSV Converter flattens JSON back into a table.
Paste your XML, read it cleanly, and fix any broken tags before they reach production.