XML to JSON Converter

The root element becomes the single top-level key. Each attribute becomes a key that starts with @, and a child element that holds only text becomes a string:

When an element has attributes and text at the same time, the text goes under a #text key next to the attributes. You'll see that in the next example.

Two or more sibling elements with the same name are collected into an array:

Convert an order with only one item and item is an object, not a one-element array:

So the shape of the JSON depends on the data. If you write code against the output, check whether item is an array before looping over it, or wrap a lone object in an array yourself.

XML has no number or boolean types, and the converter doesn't guess. In <cfg><port>8080</port><debug>true</debug><empty/><zip>02134</zip></cfg>, the port comes out as "8080", debug as "true", and the ZIP code keeps its leading zero as "02134". An empty element such as <empty/> becomes an empty string.

Text is trimmed at both ends but spaces inside it are kept. Entities like & are decoded to the character, and CDATA content is kept as plain text.

• Text mixed with child elements. In <p>Hello <b>world</b> and <i>you</i></p>, the loose words are dropped and only the children remain: { "p": { "b": "world", "i": "you" } }. This converter suits data files, not documents like XHTML or DocBook.
• Comments and processing instructions. These are ignored, including the XML declaration on the first line.
• Namespaces as such. Prefixes stay in the key names, for example media:thumbnail, and xmlns declarations appear as ordinary @xmlns attributes.

Element order between different names is not recorded either. JSON objects have no reliable order, so if the sequence of mixed siblings matters, this format can't capture it.