[Explained] This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it

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This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it: You may have seen this message while working with integrations and XML files. You may need to test payloads from incoming and outgoing systems.

Table of Contents

When it happens?

Some of the time and in certain browsers, if you open the XML file you will see this message which says “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it. The document tree is shown below.”

An advanced feature of an XML file is to give styling information and mostly XML files are raw without any styles. The browser just gives a warning.

This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it

If you see in the above image you see the exact message displayed at top . This is a xml file which is opened in firefox browser.

now lets open the same in a text editor

You see that the same file has so many extra information added to the starting of the file.

These are called namespaces. And these name spaces are missing when the file is opened in browser.

Why is it so. Because the browser tries to interpret the namespaces.

Also there are no styles to xml attached to the document. A xml stylesheet is represented as below . A style sheet is used to give a layout to the xml file.

So basically when doing integration the XML data or payload which is commonly called is not to be read by a browser, rather it will be read between 2 system endpoints, so there is no need to style or give any presentation as it’s not to be shown in a UI ( user interface).

Internet browsers are mean to read and style the information to show colors, graphics, etc. Since these details are not there and the payloads are RAW you will almost always see the message in the browsers.

This doesn’t mean your XML payload is in error. It’s just information that style is missing and the browser is showing you the raw XML data.

So you should not worry that your payload is missing some information which may be reason for any errors in further processing.

Integration processing errors can be due to wrong payloads i.e bad data or missing namespaces in the xml file and not in the style associated which is not attached at all.

Debugging Error “This XML file does not appear to have any style information associated with it”

This is a common problem when the source website/webpage is faulty or it has been hacked.

If a website doesn’t work try downloading its source code and viewing its source to find out what’s wrong.

When the link is broken, it happens again and again, so you must repeat the process, too.

Now compare the results which may be tedious, but it will give you an idea where the difference is and what could be the fixed. Knowing XML/HTML technically may help you know where to specifically look versus going line by line.

Best Advice: You can just ignore this error and continue with your development unless this is a roadblock in your builds.