How to code format xml using Java [closed]

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My code happens to be like this:

<project>
           <target>
        <for list = ... >
        <if>
                <not>
                </not>
                <then>
                    <fail>
                         </fail>
                </then>
        </if>
        </for>
    </target>
</project>

I want it to format it to make it look like this:

<project>
    <target>
        <for list = ... >
            <if>
                <not>
                </not>
                <then>
                    <fail>
                    </fail>
                </then>
            </if>
        </for>
    </target>
</project>

I thought about going with regex but is there any other ways that I can do this?

Answer 1

You can use the Transformer class included in the JDK and do something like this:

import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerException;
import javax.xml.transform.TransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource;
import java.io.BufferedWriter;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;

String xml = "<your XML goes here>..."

File file = new File("output.xml");

try (BufferedWriter out = new BufferedWriter(new FileWriter(file))) {
    TransformerFactory factory = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
    Transformer transformer = factory.newTransformer();
    transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
    transformer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
    transformer.transform(new StreamSource(new StringReader(xml)), new StreamResult(out));
}

Answer 2

XML is not a regular language, regexes don't work for generic XML documents.

Use any XML parser / writer that allows you to set the output formatting, e.g. JSoup or even the standard library capabilities.

Answer 3

Most IDE's (Eclipse, NetBeans) will do that for you.

Also, online tools can also do it in a nap. For instance:

http://www.shell-tools.net/index.php?op=xml_format

http://www.corefiling.com/opensource/xmlpp.html