PrettyXML (.NET Port)
This is a .NET port of a VBScript utility
Introduction
I read a blog yesterday about a utility to "pretty up" messy XML, and decided to port it to a .NET console app. Of course there are plenty of apps out there that do exactly what this program does, but I did it as an exercise.
Many times you receive an XML file from another department. You open it, to find that there is no formatting, just XML without spaces, etc.
A short example:
<?xml version="1.0"?><messages><note ID="1"><to>ednrg</to><from>Bob</from><heading>Reminder</heading><body>Bring new
documentation to the meeting at 3pm</body></note><note ID="2"><to>ednrg</to><from>Sandra</from><heading>Project
Delivery</heading><body>Can you give me an update on whether we are still on target for delivery?</body></note></messages>
It works perfectly with any program, but it's not formatted to make it easy to read.
Background
All credit goes to the original author: Robert McMurray.
The original blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/robert_mcmurray/archive/2012/07/06/creating-quot-pretty-quot-xml-using-xsl-and-vbscript.aspx
The code
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Xml.Xsl;
using System.Xml;
namespace PrettyXML
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
if( args.Length != 2)
{
Console.WriteLine("Usage: PrettyXML source.xml destination.xml");
return;
}
string inFile = args[0];
string outFile = args[1];
if (File.Exists(inFile))
{
string strStylesheet = "<xsl:stylesheet version=\"1.0\" xmlns:" +
"xsl=\"http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform\"><xsl:output " +
"method=\"xml\" indent=\"yes\"/><xsl:template " +
"match=\"/\"><xsl:copy-of select=\".\"/></xsl" +
":template></xsl:stylesheet>";
// Load the style sheet.
XslCompiledTransform xslt = new XslCompiledTransform();
xslt.Load(new XmlTextReader(new StringReader(strStylesheet)));
// Execute the transform and output the results to a file.
xslt.Transform(inFile, outFile);
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine("{0} cannot be found", inFile);
return;
}
}
}
}
Using the code
This simple utility creates a formatted copy of your XML. The syntax for the utility is:
prettyxml <source.xml> <destination.xml>
If we run the utility on the XML above:
prettyxml ednrgtest.xml ednrgformatted.xml
The result is:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<messages>
<note ID="1">
<to>ednrg</to>
<from>Bob</from>
<heading>Reminder</heading>
<body>Bring new documentation to the meeting at 3pm</body>
</note>
<note ID="2">
<to>ednrg</to>
<from>Sandra</from>
<heading>Project Delivery</heading>
<body>Can you give me an update on whether we are still on target for delivery?</body>
</note>
</messages>
Nothing has changed, it's now just easier to read. It's a useless utility, but may be useful once or twice in your life.
Again, all credit goes to Robert McMurray.