Use notepad++ XML Tools to edit XML files

If you have a XML file which is large and wanted to format or edit XML files using notepad++ then follow the steps below. This plugin is based on libXML2.

XML Tools to edit XML files

1. First download and install latest notepad++ if you don’t have.

2. Start notepad++ application and open Plugins Admin as shown below

3. Search “XML Tools” using search box and select that plugin as shown in the screenshot and hit “Install” button

4. Once you install the plugin, you could see the following menu items under Plugins -> XML Tools

That’s all you are done.

XML Tools Plugin Features

The following are the features of this plugin

XML Syntax check
Schema (XSD) + DTD Validation
Tag auto close
Pretty print
Linarize XML
Current XML path
XSL Transformation
XML to Text , Text to XML
Comment/ Uncomment

Now let us see how to edit XML files using notepad++ XML Tools plugin.

For instance, let’s say you have decided to write/read XML string to/from NOSQL document db like below. You may wanted to format it either online or using some tool.

"<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><request>  <info description="info" name="test_tag_usecase" prefix="gfkl" service="iptransit" tags="ryry,gjf,gfj" version="0.3">    <attributes>      <reference description="" group="" immutable="false" mandatory="firstActivity" shadow="false" syntacticType="xs:string" type="input"/>    </attributes>  </info>  <activities>    <activity id="firstActivity">      <sequence_number>1</sequence_number>      <process_subtype>automatic</process_subtype>      <process_type>firstActivity</process_type>      <activity_type>internal</activity_type>      <description/>      <response_type>synchronous</response_type>      <action/>      <fields_immutable/>      <exception/>      <notification/>      <next_sequence_number>0</next_sequence_number>    </activity>  </activities>  <files/>  <comments/></request>"

Copy and paste the above XML string in the notepad++

Then go to Plugins -> XML Tools and select “Pretty print (LibXML)”, you could see the following output

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<request>
  <info description="info" name="test_tag_usecase" prefix="gfkl" service="iptransit" tags="ryry,gjf,gfj" version="0.3">
    <attributes>
      <reference description="" group="" immutable="false" mandatory="firstActivity" shadow="false" syntacticType="xs:string" type="input"/>
    </attributes>
  </info>
  <activities>
    <activity id="firstActivity">
      <sequence_number>1</sequence_number>
      <process_subtype>automatic</process_subtype>
      <process_type>firstActivity</process_type>
      <activity_type>internal</activity_type>
      <description/>
      <response_type>synchronous</response_type>
      <action/>
      <fields_immutable/>
      <exception/>
      <notification/>
      <next_sequence_number>0</next_sequence_number>
    </activity>
  </activities>
  <files/>
  <comments/>
</request>

Now you can start editing the XML.

Further Learning

References

GitHub xmltools