Make xml more readable

Question

Is there any way to take an xml string in .net and make it easyer to read? what i mean is can i convert this:

<element1><element2>some data</element2></element1>

to this:

<element1>
    <element2>
        some data
    </element2>
</element1>

is there any built in class for this? as sql server 2005 seems to remove all formatting on xml to save space or some thing...

Answer 1

If you're using .NET 3.5, you can load it as an XDocument and then just call ToString() which will indent it appropriately. For example:

using System;
using System.Xml.Linq;

public class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        string xml = "<element1><element2>some data</element2></element1>";

        XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);
        xml = doc.ToString();
        Console.WriteLine(xml);
    }
}

Result:

<element1>
  <element2>some data</element2>
</element1>

If you're writing it to a file or other stream, then XDocument.Save will (by default) indent it too.

(I believe XElement has all the same features, if you don't really need an XDocument.)

Answer 2

How do you save / write the XML back to a file ?

You can create an XmlWriter and pass it an XmlWriterSettings instance, where you set the Indent property to true:

XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
settings.Indent = true;

XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create (outputStream, settings);

Answer 3

You can load the string into an XDocument object and save it to a string again:

XDocument doc = XDocument.Load(new StringReader(xmlString));
StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
doc.Save(writer);
string readable = writer.ToString();

That will give you the xml formatted this way:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?>
<element1>
    <element2>some data</element2>
</element1>

Answer 4

Have a look at

XmlWriterSettings

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.xml.xmlwritersettings.aspx

you can define Indent and IndentChars

Answer 5

First of all, you have tagged C# and VB.NET both. So my answer will be for both of them.

You can define function which get XML string as a parameter in type of String.

Let's say;

You created a function as :

[VB]

Private Function PrettyXML(XMLString As String) As String    
      Dim sw As New StringWriter()
      Dim xw As New XMLWriter(sw)
      xw.Formatiing = Formatting.Indented
      xw.Indentation = 4

      Dim doc As New XMLDocument
      doc.LoadXML(XMLString)
      doc.Save(xw)
      Return sw.ToString()    
End Function

Then you can simpyl call this function as:

Dim myXML As String = "<element1><element2>some data</element2></element1>"
Dim myPrettyXML As String
myPrettyXML = PrettyXML(myPrettyXML)

[C#]

Private String PrettyXML(string XMLString)
   {
      StringWriter sw = new StringWriter();
      XMLTextWriter xw = new XmlTextWriter(sw);
      xw.Formatiing = Formatting.Indented;
      xw.Indentation = 4;
      XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
      doc.Save(xm);
      return sw.ToString();
   }

Then you can simply call this function as:

string myXML =   "<element1><element2>some data</element2></element1>";
string myPrettyXML = "";
myPrettyXML = PrettyXML(myPrettyXML);

NOTE: I have not tried C# version, but it should work.

Hope this helps..