Putting each attribute on a new line during xml serialization

Question

Lets say I have a DOM object (or a string containing xml). Is it in any way possible to serialize the xml in such a way that each attribute appears on a new line?

This is the output I want:

<parent>
    <anElement 
        attrOne="1"
        attrTwo="2"
        attrThree="3"
    />
</parent>

Preferred if the solution a part of the standard java api, but I suspect such a feature is not available in there, or am I wrong?

I found a property for a serializer in the .NET Framework, called NewLineOnAttributes. What I am searching for is something equivalent, but in java.

Answer 1

The XOM library has a Serializer class which you can override to output in whatever format you want.

Answer 2

I don't know of any XML API for Java that provides that specific ability. I've checked the source code for JDOM and XOM, and they all print attributes on the same line, and provide no specific hooks for overriding that.

Both XOM and JDOM do have specific classes for serializing XML (XMLOutputter and Serializer, respectively), and both classes have protected or public methods for handling the serialization of attributes, so you could, if you wanted to, subclass those classes and override the appropriate methods to control your attribute formatting as you want it.

As for the standard Java API, though, forget it, that stuff is pretty nasty.

Answer 3

The DecentXML parser can do this.