How to Display Formatted XML

Question

I have xml data that I am returning to my view. I am putting it in a textarea, but this displays it unformatted. How can I format the xml for display in my view?

I will be displaying the xml in only part of the page, so I can't let IE display it. I want it to be in standard xml indented format.

Answer 1

If, by "formatting", you mean indented then you can load it into XmlDocument and write it into an XmlWriter initialized with an XmlWriterSettings that has Indent set to true.

private string FormatXml(string input)
{
    XmlDocument doc = new XmlDocument();
    doc.LoadXml(input);

    using (StringWriter buffer = new StringWriter())
    {
        XmlWriterSettings settings = new XmlWriterSettings();
        settings.Indent = true;

        using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(buffer, settings))
        {
            doc.WriteTo( writer );

            writer.Flush();
        }

        buffer.Flush();

        return buffer.ToString();
    }
}

Answer 2

Simply load the XML into an XElement, then use XElement.ToString().

Answer 3

You can use an XSLT to convert your XML into XHTML and then display that.