Make xml more readable

Question

Is there any way to take an xml string in .net and make it easyer to read? what i mean is can i convert this:

<element1><element2>some data</element2></element1>

to this:

<element1>
    <element2>
        some data
    </element2>
</element1>

is there any built in class for this? as sql server 2005 seems to remove all formatting on xml to save space or some thing...

Answer 1

If you're using .NET 3.5, you can load it as an XDocument and then just call ToString() which will indent it appropriately. For example:

using System;
using System.Xml.Linq;

public class Test
{
    static void Main()
    {
        string xml = "<element1><element2>some data</element2></element1>";

        XDocument doc = XDocument.Parse(xml);
        xml = doc.ToString();
        Console.WriteLine(xml);
    }
}

Result:

<element1>
  <element2>some data</element2>
</element1>

If you're writing it to a file or other stream, then XDocument.Save will (by default) indent it too.

(I believe XElement has all the same features, if you don't really need an XDocument.)