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Is there a stylesheet or Windows commandline tool for controllable XML formatting, specifically putting attributes one-per-line?

Asked 2010-04-02T18:05:12.887
15

I am searching for an XSLT or command-line tool (or C# code that can be made into a command-line tool, etc) for Windows that will do XML pretty-printing. Specifically, I want one that has the ability to put attributes one-to-a-line, something like:

<Node>
   <ChildNode 
      value1='5'
      value2='6'
      value3='happy' />
</Node>

It doesn't have to be EXACTLY like that, but I want to use it for an XML file that has nodes with dozens of attributes and spreading them across multiple lines makes them easier to read, edit, and text-diff.

NOTE: I think my preferred solution is an XSLT sheet I can pass through a C# method, though a Windows command-line tool is good too.

xml pretty-print xml-formatting
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2 Answers

14

Here's a PowerShell script to do it. It takes the following input:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Node>
    <ChildNode value1="5" value2="6" value3="happy" />
</Node>

...and produces this as output:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Node>
  <ChildNode
    value1="5"
    value2="6"
    value3="happy" />
</Node>

Here you go:

param(
    [string] $inputFile = $(throw "Please enter an input file name"),
    [string] $outputFile = $(throw "Please supply an output file name")
)

$data = [xml](Get-Content $inputFile)

$xws = new-object System.Xml.XmlWriterSettings
$xws.Indent = $true
$xws.IndentChars = "  "
$xws.NewLineOnAttributes = $true

$data.Save([Xml.XmlWriter]::Create($outputFile, $xws))

Take that script, save it as C:\formatxml.ps1. Then, from a PowerShell prompt type the following:

C:\formatxml.ps1 C:\Path\To\UglyFile.xml C:\Path\To\NeatAndTidyFile.xml

This script is basically just using the .NET framework so you could very easily migrate this into a C# application.

NOTE: If you have not run scripts from PowerShell before, you will have to execute the following command at an elevated PowerShell prompt before you will be able to execute the script:

Set-ExecutionPolicy RemoteSigned

You only have to do this one time though.

I hope that's useful to you.

answered 2010-04-18T15:34:30.173
0

Just use this xslt:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="ISO-8859-1"/>
  <xsl:param name="indent-increment" select="'   '"/>

  <xsl:template name="newline">
    <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">
</xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="comment() | processing-instruction()">
    <xsl:param name="indent" select="''"/>
    <xsl:call-template name="newline"/>    
    <xsl:value-of select="$indent"/>
    <xsl:copy />
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="text()">
    <xsl:param name="indent" select="''"/>
    <xsl:call-template name="newline"/>    
    <xsl:value-of select="$indent"/>
    <xsl:value-of select="normalize-space(.)"/>
  </xsl:template>

  <xsl:template match="text()[normalize-space(.)='']"/>

  <xsl:template match="*">
    <xsl:param name="indent" select="''"/>
    <xsl:call-template name="newline"/>    
    <xsl:value-of select="$indent"/>
      <xsl:choose>
       <xsl:when test="count(child::*) > 0">
        <xsl:copy>
         <xsl:copy-of select="@*"/>
         <xsl:apply-templates select="*|text()">
           <xsl:with-param name="indent" select="concat ($indent, $indent-increment)"/>
         </xsl:apply-templates>
         <xsl:call-template name="newline"/>
         <xsl:value-of select="$indent"/>
        </xsl:copy>
       </xsl:when>       
       <xsl:otherwise>
        <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
       </xsl:otherwise>
     </xsl:choose>
  </xsl:template>    
</xsl:stylesheet>

Or, as another option, here is a perl script: http://software.decisionsoft.com/index.html

answered 2010-04-02T18:18:10.047

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