XML to JSON Converter

An element becomes a key under its parent. Attributes become keys with a prefix (@ by default, _ or anything else if you prefer). Text beside attributes or child elements goes under a text key, #text by default. An element with only text becomes a string, and an empty element becomes "".

An element name that repeats under one parent becomes an array. Tick Always use arrays to get arrays even for single elements, which keeps the shape stable when a list happens to have one entry. Values stay strings unless you tick Numbers and booleans, which converts only text such as 42 or true that reads back unchanged.

Namespace prefixes stay in the names (p:book) and xmlns declarations stay as attributes; URIs are not resolved. CDATA becomes plain text. Comments and processing instructions are dropped, the DOCTYPE is skipped and never expanded, and the XML declaration is dropped unless you keep it. The notes under the result say what was left out.

Input:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!-- order export -->
<order id="1001" status="paid">
  <customer>Ann &amp; Co</customer>
  <item sku="A1" qty="2">Widget</item>
  <item sku="B2" qty="1">Gadget</item>
  <note><![CDATA[Leave at <back> door]]></note>
  <gift/>
</order>

Output with the default options:

{
  "order": {
    "@id": "1001",
    "@status": "paid",
    "customer": "Ann & Co",
    "item": [
      {
        "@sku": "A1",
        "@qty": "2",
        "#text": "Widget"
      },
      {
        "@sku": "B2",
        "@qty": "1",
        "#text": "Gadget"
      }
    ],
    "note": "Leave at <back> door",
    "gift": ""
  }
}

The two item elements became an array, the entity and the CDATA became plain text, the comment and declaration were dropped, and the empty gift became an empty string.

XML has things JSON lacks. If elements of different names are interleaved, grouping them by name loses the interleaving; in mixed content such as Hello <b>x</b> there the text pieces and elements are separated. Malformed XML stops with a line and column. Only the five predefined entities and numeric references are supported, so a DTD-defined entity is reported as an error. To go back, use JSON to XML; for YAML see YAML to JSON.