import indent import cElementTree as ET def test(xml): """ >>> test("text") text >>> test("text") text >>> test("texttexttext") text text text """ xml = ET.XML(xml) indent.indent(xml) print ET.tostring(xml).rstrip() if __name__ == "__main__": import doctest failed, tested = doctest.testmod(__import__(__name__)) print tested - failed, "tests ok."