Element Counter & Stats
Count every element name, report maximum nesting depth, and flag the largest and most repeated elements.
What is Element Stats?
A statistics view of an XML document. Useful before optimising a payload, debugging a schema mismatch, or sanity-checking that a transform produced the shape you meant rather than one that merely parses.
How it works
The tree is traversed once, accumulating per-name counts, the deepest element path, the attributes most used and the largest text values. Names are reported with their prefix and local name separated, so `<item>` and `<ns:item>` are not silently merged. Counts, depth and the attribute list are shown together with the document's total size for context.
- Paste the document. Drop in XML, a schema, a feed or an XPath expression. Everything is parsed in the page: no upload, no server round trip, and the tools keep working with the network switched off.
- Set the options that match your document. Indent unit, whether to keep comments, which dialect, which output method. The defaults are the safe ones — nothing that changes meaning is enabled for you.
- Read the result, then copy or download it. Results appear as you type, copy straight to the clipboard, and download with a sensible filename (.xml, .xsd, .csv). Reset returns every field to its default.
Examples
A minified document from an API response
Paste one line of XML and the Formatter indents it, wraps long start tags one attribute per line and normalises empty elements — without touching text inside mixed content.
An XPath that works in Chrome and not in your servlet
The XPath Tester evaluates against a real tree and reports the axis or function it cannot support, instead of returning zero nodes and letting you guess why.
A document that will not parse
The Validator gives line and column for every mismatched tag, stray ampersand and duplicate attribute, with the reason in words: which open element was expected, which was found.
A schema that only half matches your data
The XSD Validator marks each violation with the path of the offending node, and the Schema Generator goes the other way — inferring a starting-point XSD from real documents.
Common mistakes
Assuming a pretty-printer cannot change meaning
Whitespace between elements is often insignificant, but inside mixed content it is not: `<p>Hello <b>world</b></p>` must stay on one line. Formatting here re-indents element-only content and leaves mixed content alone.
Treating a validation pass as proof of interoperability
The DTD and XSD validators implement honest subsets. A document reported valid here can still be rejected by a full validator that understands identity constraints, substitution groups or XSD 1.1 assertions — each page lists what it does not cover.
Reading the whole document because the parser did
A DOCTYPE is not inert. If your parser resolves external entities, pasting an untrusted document is enough to read a file or call an internal URL. The XXE Risk Checker shows what a document asks for; the fix is in the parser configuration.
Forgetting that attributes and elements are not interchangeable
`<id>1</id>` and `id="1"` mean different things to every schema and every XPath. When converting to CSV or YAML the distinction is preserved (`@id`), because flattening it away is the change that costs an afternoon later.
Frequently asked questions
Why is my document so large when it looks short?
Usually one repeated element with long text. The stats list the elements with the most content, which is the fastest way to find the field that should have been trimmed, moved to an attribute or left out of the payload entirely.
How is depth counted?
The root element is depth 1, each nested element adds one. The deepest path is reported in full, because a depth number alone does not tell you which branch to look at when a parser has a nesting limit.
Are repeated sibling names a problem?
Not by themselves — that is what `maxOccurs="unbounded"` is for. What matters is whether the count matches the schema and whether the records are complete; the per-name counts are the quick check for a truncated feed or a half-finished export.