Convert XML to JSON (and back) using Javascript

Question

How would you convert from XML to JSON and then back to XML?

The following tools work quite well, but aren't completely consistent:

• xml2json

Has anyone encountered this situation before?

Answer 1

Disclaimer: I've written fast-xml-parser

Fast XML Parser can help to convert XML to JSON and vice versa. Here is the example;

var options = {
    attributeNamePrefix : "@_",
    attrNodeName: "attr", //default is 'false'
    textNodeName : "#text",
    ignoreAttributes : true,
    ignoreNameSpace : false,
    allowBooleanAttributes : false,
    parseNodeValue : true,
    parseAttributeValue : false,
    trimValues: true,
    decodeHTMLchar: false,
    cdataTagName: "__cdata", //default is 'false'
    cdataPositionChar: "\\c",
};
if(parser.validate(xmlData)=== true){//optional
    var jsonObj = parser.parse(xmlData,options);
}

If you want to parse JSON or JS object into XML then

//default options need not to set
var defaultOptions = {
    attributeNamePrefix : "@_",
    attrNodeName: "@", //default is false
    textNodeName : "#text",
    ignoreAttributes : true,
    encodeHTMLchar: false,
    cdataTagName: "__cdata", //default is false
    cdataPositionChar: "\\c",
    format: false, 
    indentBy: "  ",
    supressEmptyNode: false
};
var parser = new parser.j2xParser(defaultOptions);
var xml = parser.parse(json_or_js_obj);

Answer 2

https://github.com/abdmob/x2js - my own library (updated URL from http://code.google.com/p/x2js/):

This library provides XML to JSON (JavaScript Objects) and vice versa javascript conversion functions. The library is very small and doesn't require any other additional libraries.

API functions

• new X2JS() - to create your instance to access all library functionality. Also you could specify optional configuration options here
• X2JS.xml2json - Convert XML specified as DOM Object to JSON
• X2JS.json2xml - Convert JSON to XML DOM Object
• X2JS.xml_str2json - Convert XML specified as string to JSON
• X2JS.json2xml_str - Convert JSON to XML string

Online Demo on http://jsfiddle.net/abdmob/gkxucxrj/1/

var x2js = new X2JS();
function convertXml2JSon() {
    $("#jsonArea").val(JSON.stringify(x2js.xml_str2json($("#xmlArea").val())));
}

function convertJSon2XML() {
    $("#xmlArea").val(x2js.json2xml_str($.parseJSON($("#jsonArea").val())));
}

convertXml2JSon();
convertJSon2XML();
$("#convertToJsonBtn").click(convertXml2JSon);
$("#convertToXmlBtn").click(convertJSon2XML);

Answer 3

A while back I wrote this tool https://bitbucket.org/surenrao/xml2json for my TV Watchlist app, hope this helps too.

Synopsys: A library to not only convert xml to json, but is also easy to debug (without circular errors) and recreate json back to xml. Features :- Parse xml to json object. Print json object back to xml. Can be used to save xml in IndexedDB as X2J objects. Print json object.

Answer 4

These answers helped me a lot to make this function:

function xml2json(xml) {
  try {
    var obj = {};
    if (xml.children.length > 0) {
      for (var i = 0; i < xml.children.length; i++) {
        var item = xml.children.item(i);
        var nodeName = item.nodeName;

        if (typeof (obj[nodeName]) == "undefined") {
          obj[nodeName] = xml2json(item);
        } else {
          if (typeof (obj[nodeName].push) == "undefined") {
            var old = obj[nodeName];

            obj[nodeName] = [];
            obj[nodeName].push(old);
          }
          obj[nodeName].push(xml2json(item));
        }
      }
    } else {
      obj = xml.textContent;
    }
    return obj;
  } catch (e) {
      console.log(e.message);
  }
}

As long as you pass in a jquery dom/xml object: for me it was:

Jquery(this).find('content').eq(0)[0]

where content was the field I was storing my xml in.

Answer 5

Here' a good tool from a documented and very famous npm library that does the xml <-> js conversions very well: differently from some (maybe all) of the above proposed solutions, it converts xml comments also.

var obj = {name: "Super", Surname: "Man", age: 23};

var builder = new xml2js.Builder();
var xml = builder.buildObject(obj);

Answer 6

I would personally recommend this tool. It is an XML to JSON converter.

It is very lightweight and is in pure JavaScript. It needs no dependencies. You can simply add the functions to your code and use it as you wish.

It also takes the XML attributes into considerations.

var xml = ‘<person id=”1234” age=”30”><name>John Doe</name></person>’;
var json = xml2json(xml); 

console.log(json); 
// prints ‘{“person”: {“id”: “1234”, “age”: “30”, “name”: “John Doe”}}’

Here's an online demo!