How to pretty print XML from Java?

Question

I have a Java String that contains XML, with no line feeds or indentations. I would like to turn it into a String with nicely formatted XML. How do I do this?

Answer 1

Just to note that top rated answer requires the use of xerces.

If you don't want to add this external dependency then you can simply use the standard jdk libraries (which actually are built using xerces internally).

N.B. There was a bug with jdk version 1.5 see http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6296446 but it is resolved now.,

(Note if an error occurs this will return the original text)

package com.test;

import java.io.ByteArrayInputStream;
import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;

import javax.xml.transform.OutputKeys;
import javax.xml.transform.Source;
import javax.xml.transform.Transformer;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXSource;
import javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXTransformerFactory;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamResult;

import org.xml.sax.InputSource;

public class XmlTest {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        XmlTest t = new XmlTest();
        System.out.println(t.formatXml("text D"));
    }

    public String formatXml(String xml){
        try{
            Transformer serializer= SAXTransformerFactory.newInstance().newTransformer();
            serializer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
            //serializer.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.OMIT_XML_DECLARATION, "yes");
            serializer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
            //serializer.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.customer.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
            Source xmlSource=new SAXSource(new InputSource(new ByteArrayInputStream(xml.getBytes())));
            StreamResult res =  new StreamResult(new ByteArrayOutputStream());            
            serializer.transform(xmlSource, res);
            return new String(((ByteArrayOutputStream)res.getOutputStream()).toByteArray());
        }catch(Exception e){
            //TODO log error
            return xml;
        }
    }

}