XML Syntax Highlighter
Turn XML into color-highlighted HTML.
XML Syntax Highlighter – XML to Colored HTML
The XML syntax highlighter converts an XML document into a ready-to-paste HTML snippet with editor-style colors. Use it to show configuration examples in documentation, API responses in a blog post, or feed snippets in a newsletter, without adding a highlighting library to the page.
How it works
- Paste XML or open a file — minified or already indented.
- Pick a theme: GitHub light, VS Code dark, or Monokai, and choose 2 spaces, 4 spaces, or tabs.
- Optionally switch on line numbers for longer listings.
- Copy the HTML code on the right; the live preview below shows exactly how it will look.
Readable before it is colorful
The highlighter first parses and re-indents the document, so a one-line SOAP response becomes a properly nested listing. Because parsing is strict, the tool also catches mistakes: an unclosed tag produces an error message rather than a half-colored snippet on your website.
Safe to embed
All text is escaped — <, >, &, and quotes become entities — so markup inside CDATA sections or text nodes is displayed literally. Line numbers are marked as non-selectable, which means readers who copy the example from your page do not pick them up in most browsers.
Choosing a theme
GitHub light suits most documentation sites and printed material. VS Code dark and Monokai stand out in dark-mode blogs and slide decks, where a bright code block would dazzle. Since colors are baked into the markup, the snippet does not change with the reader's system theme — pick the one that matches your page.
Good use cases
- Documenting Maven, Spring, or .NET configuration files.
- Showing request and response bodies of SOAP or REST APIs that speak XML.
- Presenting SVG source code next to the rendered graphic.
- Adding examples to wikis and knowledge bases that do not allow custom CSS.
Related tools
Highlight JSON with the JSON Syntax Highlighter, clean up the source first in the XML Editor, or escape XML for plain-text embedding with XML Escape.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which parts of the XML get their own color?
Tag names, attribute names, attribute values, text content, and punctuation such as < and /> are colored separately. Comments are shown in italics, and CDATA sections and DOCTYPE declarations use a muted color.
Do I need a stylesheet or script on my page?
No. Every color is an inline style on a <span>, and the surrounding <pre> sets its own background, font, and padding, so the snippet renders the same in any HTML page, CMS block, or email.
Is my XML reformatted?
Yes. The document is parsed and pretty-printed with the indentation you choose before highlighting, so minified XML comes out readable. Invalid XML is rejected with the line of the error instead of producing broken HTML.