About the XML to Text Converter
Sometimes you only want the values: the text of every leaf element and every attribute, each with enough of a path to know where it came from. This converter walks the document and writes lines such as catalog/book/title = The Lighthouse Keeper and catalog/book/@id = bk101, in document order.
The path format is a simplified XPath: element names separated by slashes and attributes marked with @. Repeated elements share the same path, which keeps lines short; if you need positions, the XPath Tester can address them with an index.
It is a one-way conversion intended for reading, grepping and pasting into tickets, not for round-tripping. To strip markup and keep only the readable prose of a document, the HTML to Text tool works on XML too.
How to use
- Paste XML on the left.
- Search the lines on the right for the value you need.
- Copy or download the list.
Common questions
- Can the output be converted back to XML?
- No. Structure such as element order and repetition is not fully recoverable from the flat list.
- Are attributes included?
- Yes, each attribute gets its own line with an @ before its name.
- How are empty elements shown?
- As the path with an empty value after the equals sign.