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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-21T05:18:17+00:00

Is there a simple way to print an unformated xml string to screen in

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Is there a simple way to print an unformated xml string to screen in a ruby on rails application? Something like a xml beautifier?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Ruby core REXML::Document has pretty printing:

    REXML::Document#write( output=$stdout, indent=-1, transitive=false, ie_hack=false )

    indent: An integer. If -1, no
    indenting will be used; otherwise, the
    indentation will be twice this number
    of spaces, and children will be
    indented an additional amount. For a
    value of 3, every item will be
    indented 3 more levels, or 6 more
    spaces (2 * 3). Defaults to -1

    An example:

    require "rexml/document"

doc = REXML::Document.new "<a><b><c>TExt</c><d /></b><b><d/></b></a>"
out = ""
doc.write(out, 1)
puts out

    Produces: 

    <a>
 <b>
  <c>
   TExt
  </c>
  <d/>
 </b>
 <b>
  <d/>
 </b>
</a>

    EDIT: Rails has already REXML loaded, so you only have to produce new document and then write the pretty printed XML to some string which then can be embedded in a <pre> tag.

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