Format XML

xmlformat.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
import sys
import re
from xml.dom.minidom import parseString


def format_xml(xml_str):
    xml_str = re.sub(r'\s*\n\s*', '', xml_str)
    ugly = parseString(xml_str).toprettyxml(indent='    ')
    regex = re.compile(r'>\n\s+([^<>\s].*?)\n\s+</', re.DOTALL)
    return regex.sub('>\g<1></', ugly)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    if len(sys.argv) == 2:
        f = open(file, 'r')
    else:
        f = sys.stdin
    print format_xml(f.read())

Use to re-format XML, passing a file or reading from STDIN::

xmlformat.py file.xml
cat file.xml | xmlformat.py