XML Formatter & Validator – Format, Minify, and Validate XML Online
About the XML Formatter & Validator
The XML Formatter & Validator checks whether your XML is well-formed, then lets you beautify it with custom indentation or minify it by stripping unnecessary whitespace. It reports detailed parse errors with the exact line and column when something’s broken, and shows document stats like element count, attribute count, and maximum nesting depth for valid XML.
It’s built for developers debugging feeds, config files, or API payloads that need to be clean and well-formed before they’re used elsewhere. Once your XML is validated, the XML to JSON Converter is useful if you need to move that structure into JSON, and the JSON Formatter works the same way if you’re validating JSON documents alongside XML.
Our team ran this validator against malformed tags, unclosed elements, mismatched namespaces, and deeply nested documents to confirm the error messages and formatting stay accurate across a wide range of real-world XML.
How to Use the XML Formatter & Validator
- Paste your XML into the input field, or click Sample XML to try it with example data.
- Choose an Action: Format/Beautify, Minify, or Validate Only.
- Set your preferred Indent Size and Indent Type if formatting.
- Click Process XML to see the result and document statistics.
- Use Copy Output or Download .xml to save your formatted file.
Example Usage
Input: <root><item id=”1″>Test</item></root>
Output (Formatted):
<root>
<item id=”1″>Test</item>
</root>
If the same input were run through Minify instead, the whitespace between tags is stripped entirely, producing a single compact line ideal for reducing file size in production feeds. For markup instead of data files, the HTML Beautifier handles the same kind of formatting for HTML documents.
Frequently Asked Questions
Well-formed means every tag is properly opened and closed, elements are correctly nested, and the document follows basic XML syntax rules, regardless of whether it matches a specific schema.
No, it checks for well-formedness only, meaning correct XML syntax and structure, but it does not validate content against a DTD, XSD, or other schema definition.
Format adds indentation and line breaks to make the XML human-readable, while Minify removes all unnecessary whitespace to produce the smallest possible file size.
Pinpointing the exact line and column where parsing failed makes it much faster to locate and fix the specific tag or character causing the issue in large XML files.
Yes, it’s completely free with no signup required.
