Forcing MSXML to format XML output with indents and newlines

Question

I am using MSXML 3.0 with Visual Basic 6 to store and retrieve configuration of my application. When saving the resulting DOMDocument to a XML file the root obj

Answer 1

Here is a shorter indentation utility function that works on DOM objects and strings as input and outputs a formatted string. File handling (utf-8) is left outside its scope. Does not use ADODB streams and does not need MSXML in project references.

Public Function FormatXmlIndent(vDomOrString As Variant, sResult As String) As Boolean
    Dim oWriter         As Object ' MSXML2.MXXMLWriter

    On Error GoTo QH
    Set oWriter = CreateObject("MSXML2.MXXMLWriter")
    oWriter.omitXMLDeclaration = True
    oWriter.indent = True
    With CreateObject("MSXML2.SAXXMLReader")
        Set .contentHandler = oWriter
        '--- keep CDATA elements
        .putProperty "http://xml.org/sax/properties/lexical-handler", oWriter 
        .parse vDomOrString
    End With
    sResult = oWriter.output
    '--- success
    FormatXmlIndent = True
    Exit Function
QH:
End Function

Can be used like this

    sXml = ReadTextFile("doc.xml")
    FormatXmlIndent sXml, sXml

... so if anything fails (invalid XML, etc.) sXml still holds original unformatted input.