XML Visualization tool? [closed]

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What is good XML visualization tool? I am looking for tools to help provide good xml visualization. XML spy didnt do a good job at it

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BaseX has fantastic visualisations, is blindingly fast, and is free.

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Apart from the already mentioned XMLSpy, other commercial heavyweights include OxygenXML, and StylusStudio which apart from visualization also support XSLT transformations and debugging, WSDL, XPath, etc.

Windows

XML Marker does a good job of visualizing simple XML data. It is fast and light-weight. Version 2.x is a limited 30 days trial, and has JSON visualization. The older version 1.1 is fully functional freeware without limitations (scroll the download page to see the link). I have found it to be the best quick tool for visualizing XML logs. If you don't care about JSON support, then the only important limitation in v1.1. is lack of Unicode support. Version 1.1 runs fine under wine on Linux and OSX.

Microsoft Excel starting with version 2003 can visualize table-like XML data - drag-and-drop an XML file into an empty Excel window (or to the Excel toolbar if you have a spreadsheet already opened), and select As an XML table when prompted. Make sure you remove the DTD schema declaration in the XML file or otherwise Excel fails to open the file.

First Object is the fastest but it does not go as far as XML Marker in terms of visualization.

Linux

KXmlEditor is usable but not outstanding.

Cross-platoform

Intellij IDEs i.e. Idea, Pycharm, etc. (including the free community editions) do a good job of XML and HTML visualization, validation and navigation, running xPath queries. It can show a tree view of an XML/HTML file as well as navigation breadcrumbs reflecting the cursor position:

The tree navigation is also accessible via a popup, from the menu Navigate > File Structure or the corresponding shortcut. In the popup you can type the partial node name and press Enter to quickly jump to it:

You can also jump to parent/child nodes by clicking them in the breadcrumb. If you can't see the breadcrumb then enable it from the settings.

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If you don't like XML Spy, chances are you won't like similar editors. (but please explain what you don't like in XML Spy, so that we can help you better)

XML Spy and similar are very powerful tools. If you don't like it, that might mean that you need something with a more immediate representation. Try open your XML in Eclipse, you might like Eclipse's simplicity.

XML being extensible, no ultimate visualization tool exists. If you want to visualize a certain kind of XML (for instance WSDL), then look for a visualization tool for this particular kind of XML. If none exists, a powerful and cheap visualization option is to write an XSL stylesheet that will display the XML content as you like it.

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I've used several products. The ones that I can recommend are:

SchemaAgent (http://www.altova.com/schemaagent.html)

From their feature list:

• Connect to any file repository to analyze file relationships
• Visualize files as graphical components
• Immediately identify linked, referenced & related files
• Analyze file relationships based on color coded lines
• View details of displayed files (IIRs, global elements, namespaces, etc.)
• Drag & drop to manage IIR relationships between XSD, XSLT & WSDL files
• Automatically insert & save required IIR code in impacted files
• Build complex XSD, XSLT & WSDL files from smaller components
• Re-use standardized components in a modular development approach
• Access SchemaAgent schema components in XMLSpy schema editor
• Save & print graphical designs to document your XML information architecture
• Understand file dependencies & the impact of every change

and

XPathVisualiser (http://www.xml.com/pub/p/275)

• Disadvantage (at least in my eyes): requires MSXML3 and IE

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XMLMax, especially if the xml is large.

very fast, color-coded treeview

xpath query with results in treeview

http://www.xponentsoftware.com

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Maybe this wasn't really what you were asking about but I was looking for a tool to generate user documentation for a Web Service, given the schema and/or wsdl. I tested 4 different tools for the job:

• Liquid XML studio
• XML Spy 2011
• DocumentX! 2011
• Stylus Studio 2011 XML Enterprise Suite

I was only looking for a tool to provide API documentation from the Web Service schema, disregarding any other feature any of the tools had. Me and my team all fell for the documentation/visualization that DocumentX! 2011 generated. It failed miserably to load my WSDL (some error message, maybe it cannot handle WSDLs?) but did a great job with the XSD. Each element/type has a:

1. Diagram
2. Concise text overview
3. References to where it's used
4. XSD source code section

What really made it stand out from the rest was the separation of diagram and overview. In XML Spy they are one and same which makes the diagram bigger. Liquid XML has a nice small diagram layout but lacks the overview completely. Stylus Studio instead has an XML sample where you have to click to see element documentation.

All the other tools have a lot of features for working with XML that DocumentX does not have. DocumentX is only a tool for documentation and that was what I was looking for.