convert one line xml string into well indented text

[alexis]

Do you know of a software or a script that would take a long line of xml or html and output legible indented text?

For example:

<tag1 ID='whatever'><tag2 arg='a'><tag3> Text here <tag4>More text</tag4></tag3></tag2></tag1>

would become:

<tag1 ID='whatever'>
.<tag2 arg='a'>
..<tag3>
...Text here
...<tag4>More text</tag4>
..</tag3>
.</tag2>
</tag1>

(replace the dots by tabs or spaces)

[johnl]

hi,

the software you are looking for probably already exists in your browser.
when loading xml-data into a modern browser it will apply an internal stylesheet for display which nearly does what you want (it adds a '-' or '+' to some entries though).

alternatively you can supply your own stylesheet specifying

<xsl:output indent="yes"/> 

and using an indentity-transform similar to:

<?xml version="1.0"?>  
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">  
<xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes" />  
<xsl:template match="/">  
 <xsl:apply-templates/>  
</xsl:template>  
<xsl:template match="*¦@*¦node()"> 
 <xsl:copy> 
 <xsl:apply-templates select="*¦@*¦node()"/> 
 </xsl:copy> 
</xsl:template> 
</xsl:stylesheet> 

in this untested example you still will have to change unwanted linefeeds to spaces. you could use normalize-space() here.