How to prettify/format an XML buffer?

Question

I have a file with xml all on one line. Does the functionality already exist to reformat this buffer to be somewhat user-readable?

Answer 1

Does the functionality already exist to reformat this buffer to be somewhat user-readable?

Of course, and you have plenty of options. I'd probably feed it to an external program using:

C-x h C-u M-| xmllint --format - RET

This program comes with libxml2. You could also use tidy. Here's a list of commandline xml formatting tools: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16090869/how-to-pretty-print-xml-from-the-command-line

You could also do a search and replace and then indent:

M-% > < RET > C-q C-j < RET ! C-M-\

Neat trick: you can copy and paste the above string into M-: (eval-expression) like this:

(execute-kbd-macro (kbd "M-% > < RET > C-q C-j < RET ! C-M-\\"))

Answer 2

The built-in sgml-mode has a command to do this: sgml-pretty-print. If you're in nxml-mode it looks like you need switch to sgml-mode first. You could write a command to temporarily switch to sgml-mode, run pretty-print, then switch back to nxml-mode.

For example, here is a command that will pretty-print the region, optionally with auto-fill enabled:

(defun xml-pretty-print (beg end &optional arg)
  "Reformat the region between BEG and END.
    With optional ARG, also auto-fill."
  (interactive "*r\nP")
  (let ((fill (or (bound-and-true-p auto-fill-function) -1)))
    (sgml-mode)
    (when arg (auto-fill-mode))
    (sgml-pretty-print beg end)
    (nxml-mode)
    (auto-fill-mode fill)))

Answer 3

Mark your xml and do:

M-x sgml-pretty-print

Or just run the command without a marked region to prettify the whole buffer.

Answer 4

write this into your ~/.emacs.d/init.el:

(require 'sgml-mode)

(defun ninrod/reformat-xml ()
  (interactive)
  (save-excursion
    (sgml-pretty-print (point-min) (point-max))
    (indent-region (point-min) (point-max))))

reload emacs, then just call M-x reformat-xml on the badly formatted xml buffer.

source: https://davidcapello.com/blog/emacs/reformat-xml-on-emacs/

Answer 5

In nxml-mode, C-x H will mark the whole buffer and TAB will indent the selection.

Answer 6

Following the hint of the answer above, and assuming you have tidy installed a variation could be:

`C-x h M-| tidy -quiet -xml -utf8 -indent -`

This will open a new buffer *Shell Command Output* instead of directly replacing the contents of the buffer. After checking the result, replace the old contents with the new with:

C-x h M-insert-buffer

choose the suggested default which will probably be *Shell Command Output*. You can save the command for later with a keyboard macro:

C-x ( C-x h M-| tidy -quiet -xml -utf8 -indent - C-x)
C-x C-k n pretty-xml

With this you can execute M-x pretty-xml to reformat the buffer.