SOAP Formatter & Beautifier - Format SOAP Data Online
Updated
Format and beautify SOAP data online instantly. 100% client-side processing. Free SOAP formatter with line numbers and error markers.
Key Features
- ✅ SOAP message formatting
- ✅ XML structure beautification
- ✅ Whitespace normalization
- ✅ Instant processing
How to Use
- Paste your SOAP message (Envelope, Header, and Body)
- Click Format or Beautify
- View the properly indented output with namespace prefixes preserved
- Copy for debugging or documentation
Expert FAQ
- Why does a SOAP message specifically need its own formatter instead of the general XML Formatter?
A SOAP envelope is XML, so the underlying re-indentation logic is the same — but real-world SOAP messages are unusually dense with multiple namespace prefixes (soap:, xsi:, and often several service-specific ones) declared at different levels of the envelope, and getting namespace-aware indentation and prefix visibility right matters more here than in typical config XML. This tool applies the same safe, mixed-content-aware formatting as the XML Formatter with defaults tuned for the Envelope/Header/Body structure SOAP always has. - Does it validate the message against the SOAP envelope schema, or just reformat it?
Just reformats — it confirms the input is well-formed XML (a real parse happens before re-indentation, so malformed input surfaces as a parse error rather than a garbled format attempt) but doesn't validate against the SOAP envelope schema or any service-specific WSDL-defined schema. For schema-level validation against a specific service contract, the WSDL Formatter and a schema-aware SOAP client/testing tool are the appropriate next step. - My SOAP message has a soap:Fault element with a nested stack trace as text — does formatting mangle that?
No — text content inside elements, including a fault's detail/stacktrace text, is preserved exactly as-is; only inter-tag whitespace is affected, and mixed-content elements (text interleaved with child tags) are detected and left untouched, the same protection the XML Formatter provides. This matters specifically for fault messages, where a mangled stack trace would defeat the entire purpose of formatting it for debugging. - Does it strip or normalize the XML declaration and encoding at the top of the message?
No — the prolog (<?xml version="1.0" encoding="..."?>) is preserved as-is, since stripping or altering the declared encoding could change how a downstream SOAP client or server interprets the byte content, which is exactly the kind of silent corruption a formatting tool should never introduce.
Technical Details
SOAP messages are XML, so formatting one means the same core operation as the general XML Formatter — parse, then re-serialize with consistent indentation — but tuned for what real SOAP traffic actually looks like: a soap:Envelope wrapping a Header and Body, frequently carrying several namespace prefixes declared at different nesting levels (the SOAP namespace itself, XML Schema instance namespace, and one or more service-specific namespaces from the WSDL). Getting prefix and namespace visibility right in the formatted output matters more here than in typical single-namespace config XML, since misreading which prefix maps to which namespace is a common source of confusion when debugging an unfamiliar SOAP integration. Like the general XML Formatter, this tool requires well-formed input — formatting happens after a genuine parse, so a malformed message surfaces as a specific parse error rather than a best-effort garbled reformat — and it keeps the order of text and child tags in mixed-content elements, though each text run is placed on its own line, the same behavior documented for the general XML Formatter. This matters concretely for soap:Fault elements, which often carry a stack trace or detailed error text as element content; that text is preserved exactly, since a formatter that mangled fault detail would defeat the entire point of formatting the fault for debugging in the first place. What this tool deliberately does not do is schema validation: it confirms the message is well-formed XML, not that it conforms to the SOAP envelope schema or a specific service's WSDL-defined message shape. For that layer of checking, pair this with the WSDL Formatter when working through an unfamiliar service's contract, and a dedicated SOAP testing/validation client for actual schema conformance checks. The XML declaration and encoding at the top of the document are left untouched, since altering a declared encoding could change how a downstream SOAP endpoint interprets the message bytes.