Tablizer

Convert XML to PDF Online

Paste an XML table below, edit it if you need to, and get PDF back. The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded, there is no size limit and there is no signup.

From

The only part of this site that uses a server. The address is sent to it so the page can be fetched, because a browser is not allowed to fetch someone else's page itself. Your own files are never involved.

Nothing here is uploaded. The parsing happens on this page.
Edit
Paste or upload something above and it will appear here.
ToDataMarkupDocumentsCodeSchemasImages

The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

What XML is

XML marks up data with nested named tags and optional attributes. It is verbose, strict about being well-formed, and can carry a schema that says what shape a document must have.

Enterprise integrations, government data feeds, RSS, SOAP services and older document formats.

What PDF is

PDF describes a page: glyphs at coordinates, not rows and columns. A table in a PDF is a visual arrangement, not a data structure.

Reports, invoices, statements and anything sent to be read rather than processed.

What changes when you convert XML to PDF

The first repeating element is treated as the rows. Attributes are read alongside child elements and prefixed so they do not collide with a same-named tag. Nesting one level deep becomes dotted column names; deeper structures are kept as text.

The table is drawn into a paginated document with the header repeated on every page, so a long table stays readable past page one. Page size, orientation and font size are all adjustable.

What carries over from XML to PDF

XML records 3 things about a table that PDF has no way to hold.

An empty cell and a missing one are the same thing in PDF, so a null and an empty string in the XML both come out blank and can no longer be told apart.

XML can hold a value that is itself a list or an object. PDF has only flat cells, so nested values are flattened into one cell rather than being spread across columns.

PDF is the end of the line for this data. Reading the table back out of it is a separate and much harder problem than writing it, so keep the XML if you will need the values again.

Questions

How do I convert XML to PDF?

Paste your XML into the box above or drop the file onto it. Check the table in the grid, then copy or download the PDF from the output panel. It takes one step and the data never leaves your browser.

Can I get my table back out of the PDF?

Out of one made here, yes, because the text is real text. Out of a scanned document, no. A scan is an image of a page, and pulling data from it needs optical character recognition, which is a different job with a different failure rate.

Can I convert the PDF back to XML afterwards?

Not mechanically. PDF keeps how the table looks, not what it held, so going back means reading the values off the page again. Keep the XML if you will need it.

What happens to nested values?

PDF has no nested cell, so a list or object inside a XML value is flattened into a single cell rather than expanded into extra columns. Split it before converting if the parts need to be separate.

Is there a limit on file size?

No. The work happens on your own machine, so the limit is your machine's memory rather than an upload cap. A file with tens of thousands of rows converts in a second or two.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. The parsing and generating are done by JavaScript running on this page. You can watch the network tab while you convert and see that nothing is sent.

Related conversions