How can I pretty-print XML source using VB6 and MSXML?

Daniel Rikowski picture Daniel Rikowski · Jul 13, 2009 · Viewed 11.1k times · Source

I've been looking after this for months now and I mostly found sites asking the same question.

The answers I did found were always for .NET or C++ or involved XSLT.

Answer

Daniel Rikowski picture Daniel Rikowski · Jul 13, 2009

After months of research I've come up with this.

Public Function PrettyPrintXML(XML As String) As String

  Dim Reader As New SAXXMLReader60
  Dim Writer As New MXXMLWriter60

  Writer.indent = True
  Writer.standalone = False
  Writer.omitXMLDeclaration = False
  Writer.encoding = "utf-8"

  Set Reader.contentHandler = Writer
  Set Reader.dtdHandler = Writer
  Set Reader.errorHandler = Writer

  Call Reader.putProperty("http://xml.org/sax/properties/declaration-handler", _
          Writer)
  Call Reader.putProperty("http://xml.org/sax/properties/lexical-handler", _
          Writer)

  Call Reader.parse(XML)

  PrettyPrintXML = Writer.output

End Function

Using a document:

Public Function PrettyPrintDocument(Doc As DOMDocument60) As String
  PrettyPrintDocument = PrettyPrintXML(Doc.XML)
End Function