WSDL Formatter

WSDL Formatter – Beautify Web Service Descriptions

A WSDL (Web Services Description Language) file describes a SOAP service: which operations it offers, which messages they exchange, and where the endpoint lives. Generated WSDLs are often served without formatting and can be thousands of characters on one line. The WSDL formatter indents the whole document so its sections are easy to navigate.

Anatomy of a WSDL 1.1 file

• types – embedded XML Schema (XSD) definitions for the data structures.
• message – the parts that make up each request and response.
• portType – the abstract interface: a list of operations with input and output messages.
• binding – how operations are mapped to SOAP (style rpc or document, literal or encoded).
• service – the concrete endpoint address in a soap:address element.

With formatting, each of these sections and every operation inside them appears on its own indented block.

How to use it

Paste the WSDL (you can usually get it by appending ?wsdl to the service URL), open a .wsdl file, or click Sample. Choose indentation and whether to keep comments. The output can be copied or downloaded as service.wsdl.

Reading a WSDL faster

Start at the service element to find the endpoint, follow its binding attribute to the binding, then the binding's type to the port type, where the operations are listed. Message names lead you to the schema types. Formatting makes this chain of references much easier to follow.

Related tools

Get a structured summary of services, operations, and types with WSDL to JSON, format the actual requests and responses with the SOAP Formatter, or validate any XML with the XML Validator.