Vim indent xml file

Question

I am learning Vim but I thought this was a simple task but I cannot get it to work. I have browser SO but the solutions are not working for me.

I am trying to correc

Answer 1

This is easy to achieve once ~/.vimrc is setup properly.

Set the following options in ~/.vimrc:

filetype indent on
set smartindent

This allows you to move the cursor to the top of the file and indent to the end: gg=G

You can also select the desired text with visual mode and hit = to indent it.

Answer 2

for those one which is using coc.nvim plugin, you can install coc-xml by :CocInstall coc-xml , then mapping format key in your config file: nmap <silent> fm <Plug>(coc-format). From now on, you can format not only xml file but other file very easy

Answer 3

In VIM, I auto-indent the whole file (using hard tabs) using the following command:

:%!XMLLINT_INDENT="^I" xmllint --format -

The ^I is a single character you generate via: CTRL+v,CTRL+i

Answer 4

I like Berei's answer. However, I think the following is a little more flexible in that you don't have to alter your vimrc file. Plus it is easier to format select portions of the XML file (something I happen to do a lot).

First, highlight the XML you want to format.

Then, in normal mode, type ! xmllint --format -

Your command-line at the bottom will look like this:

:'<,'>!xmllint --format -

Then hit enter.

Technical Explanation

The selected text is sent to the xmllint command, then --format'ed, and the results of xmllint are placed over your selected text in vim. The - at the end of the command is for receiving standard input - which, in this case, is the selected text that vim sends to xmllint.

Answer 5

A simple solution that I like which doesn't require any 3rd party tool is to insert a newline before each opening tag '<...>'. Then you can use standard vim auto-indentation. In short:

1. %s/</\r</g
2. gg=G to auto indent

Answer 6

I had the same problem. It turned out, that the line

set viewdir=~\.vim\views\

in my .vimrc caused the problem. Just make sure, you don't have it.