Pretty print XML on Unix command line

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Needed to check some XML output from a CalDAV service so I used curl, which is nice and simple. Only problem was that all the XML came back on a single long unreadable line. Turned out it wasn't too difficult to get it formatted:

$ curl --digest --user usr:pwd -X PROPFIND | xmllint --format -

The key part here is of course the piping into xmllint. --format tells it to format the XML and the - tells it to read the XML from standard in. The dash can be swapped with the path to an XML file, if you need to format already downloaded XML.

$ xmllint --format file.xml

Simple pimple dimple 🙂