Quickly Format XML Text Files
Often when writing XML files to disk as text files developers do not include any formatting. As such, if you need to open the file and examine it in Notepad, for example, and make changes it may be very hard to read. There is an easy way to fix this. You can download the executable file hereor just use the following code in Visual Studio. NOTE: This is a console application expecting a file name as a command line argument. You can drag your text file onto the executable file and a new file will be created with the same name as the file name with “-formatted.xml” appended.
Download the executable
Imports System.IO
ImportsSystem.Xml
Imports System.TextModuleFormatXML
Sub Main(ByValArgs() As String)
DimstrFile As String
DimstrFileNew As String Try
‘ read in the file to convert from the command line
IfArgs.Count = 1 Then
strFile = Args(0)
IfFile.Exists(strFile) Then
‘ parse the file and create a new one
strFileNew = strFile & “-formatted.xml”
DimstrAlldData() As String= File.ReadAllLines(strFile)
DimstrData As String = String.Empty
DimstrNewData AsStringBuilder = NewStringBuilder
For EachstrData InstrAlldData
‘ load the whole file into a single stringbuilder
strNewData.Append(strData)
Next ‘ creat an XML document
DimxmlDoc As NewXml.XmlDocument()
‘ load the string
xmlDoc.LoadXml(strNewData.ToString)
‘ normalize it
xmlDoc.Normalize()
’save it back out
xmlDoc.Save(strFileNew)
Console.WriteLine(“Done. File saved as “& strFileNew)
Else
Console.WriteLine(“Either the file “& strFile & ” does not exist or I do not have permissions to access it.”)
End If
Else
Console.WriteLine(“To use this, please pass in the name of the file you want to parse.”)
End If Catch ex As Exception
Console.WriteLine(“Error: “ & ex.Message)
End Try
End Sub
End Module
Using this code, an xml file that looked like “<TopLevel><MiddleLevel1><BottomLevel></BottomLevel></MiddleLevel1><MiddleLevel2></MiddleLevel2></TopLevel>” will be converted into
<TopLevel>
<MiddleLevel1>
<BottomLevel>
</BottomLevel>
</MiddleLevel1>
<MiddleLevel2>
</MiddleLevel2>
</TopLevel>
There are many useful features you could add to this code and make a nice product. For example,
- Make a UI that allows the user to select a file for input and a file for output.
- Allow for multiple input files
- Provide progress feedback to the user.
- Allow scheduling
- Quickly email the results
- Have a preview window in the UI
posted in General Software Development, Microsoft .Net | 3 Comments