Java: How to Indent XML Generated by Transformer

Question

You need to enable 'INDENT' and set the indent amount for the transformer:

t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
t.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");

Update:

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Reference : How to strip whitespace-only text nodes from a DOM before serialization?

(Many thanks to all members especially @marc-novakowski, @james-murty and @saad):

Neither of the suggested solutions worked for me. So I kept on searching for an alternative solution, which ended up being a mixture of the two before mentioned and a third step.

1. set the indent-number into the transformerfactory
2. enable the indent in the transformer
3. wrap the otuputstream with a writer (or bufferedwriter)

//(1)
TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
tf.setAttribute("indent-number", new Integer(2));

//(2)
Transformer t = tf.newTransformer();
t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");

//(3)
t.transform(new DOMSource(doc),
new StreamResult(new OutputStreamWriter(out, "utf-8"));

You must do (3) to workaround a "buggy" behavior of the xml handling code.

Source: johnnymac75 @ http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=6296446

(If I have cited my source incorrectly please let me know)

The following code is working for me with Java 7. I set the indent (yes) and indent-amount (2) on the transformer (not the transformer factory) to get it working.

TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer t = tf.newTransformer();
t.setOutputProperty("{http://xml.apache.org/xslt}indent-amount", "2");
t.setOutputProperty(OutputKeys.INDENT, "yes");
t.transform(source, result);

@mabac's solution to set the attribute didn't work for me, but @lapo's comment proved helpful.

import com.sun.org.apache.xml.internal.serializer.OutputPropertiesFactory

transformer.setOutputProperty(OutputPropertiesFactory.S_KEY_INDENT_AMOUNT, "2");

If you want the indentation, you have to specify it to the TransformerFactory.

TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
tf.setAttribute("indent-number", new Integer(2));
Transformer t = tf.newTransformer();

I used the Xerces (Apache) library instead of messing with Transformer. Once you add the library add the code below.

OutputFormat format = new OutputFormat(document);
format.setLineWidth(65);
format.setIndenting(true);
format.setIndent(2);
Writer outxml = new FileWriter(new File("out.xml"));
XMLSerializer serializer = new XMLSerializer(outxml, format);
serializer.serialize(document);