XML in JSON

// Using the DOMParser API to walk XML and build a JSON object
function xmlToJson(xml) {
  const parser = new DOMParser()
  const doc = parser.parseFromString(xml, 'application/xml')

  function nodeToObj(node) {
    const obj = {}
    // Handle attributes
    if (node.attributes) {
      for (const attr of node.attributes) {
        obj['@' + attr.name] = attr.value
      }
    }
    // Handle child nodes
    for (const child of node.childNodes) {
      if (child.nodeType === 3) { // text
        const text = child.textContent.trim()
        if (text) obj['#text'] = text
      } else if (child.nodeType === 1) { // element
        const key = child.nodeName
        const val = nodeToObj(child)
        if (obj[key]) {
          if (!Array.isArray(obj[key])) obj[key] = [obj[key]]
          obj[key].push(val)
        } else {
          obj[key] = val
        }
      }
    }
    // Simplify text-only nodes
    const keys = Object.keys(obj)
    if (keys.length === 1 && keys[0] === '#text') return obj['#text']
    return obj
  }

  return nodeToObj(doc.documentElement)
}

const xml = '<user><name>Alice</name><role>admin</role></user>'
console.log(JSON.stringify(xmlToJson(xml), null, 2))
// → { "name": "Alice", "role": "admin" }

import xmltodict
import json

xml = """
<user>
  <name>Alice</name>
  <roles>
    <role>admin</role>
    <role>editor</role>
  </roles>
</user>
"""

# xmltodict converts XML to an OrderedDict
result = xmltodict.parse(xml)
print(json.dumps(result, indent=2))
# → {
# →   "user": {
# →     "name": "Alice",
# →     "roles": { "role": ["admin", "editor"] }
# →   }
# → }

# With the standard library (xml.etree.ElementTree)
import xml.etree.ElementTree as ET

def etree_to_dict(elem):
    d = {}
    if elem.attrib:
        d.update({f"@{k}": v for k, v in elem.attrib.items()})
    for child in elem:
        child_data = etree_to_dict(child)
        if child.tag in d:
            if not isinstance(d[child.tag], list):
                d[child.tag] = [d[child.tag]]
            d[child.tag].append(child_data)
        else:
            d[child.tag] = child_data
    if elem.text and elem.text.strip():
        if d:
            d["#text"] = elem.text.strip()
        else:
            return elem.text.strip()
    return d

root = ET.fromstring(xml)
print(json.dumps(etree_to_dict(root), indent=2))

package main

import (
    "encoding/json"
    "encoding/xml"
    "fmt"
    "strings"
)

// For simple, known schemas — define a struct
type User struct {
    XMLName xml.Name `xml:"user"`
    Name    string   `xml:"name"`
    Roles   []string `xml:"roles>role"`
}

func main() {
    data := `<user><name>Alice</name><roles><role>admin</role><role>editor</role></roles></user>`
    var user User
    xml.NewDecoder(strings.NewReader(data)).Decode(&user)

    out, _ := json.MarshalIndent(user, "", "  ")
    fmt.Println(string(out))
    // → { "Name": "Alice", "Roles": ["admin", "editor"] }
}

# Using xq (part of yq, a jq wrapper for XML)
# Install: pip install yq  OR  brew install yq
echo '<user><name>Alice</name></user>' | xq .
# → { "user": { "name": "Alice" } }

# Using xmlstarlet + jq
xmlstarlet sel -t -v '//name' input.xml | jq -R '{ name: . }'

# Node.js one-liner with xml2js
echo '<a><b>1</b></a>' | node -e "
  const {parseString} = require('xml2js');
  let d=''; process.stdin.on('data',c=>d+=c);
  process.stdin.on('end',()=>parseString(d,(e,r)=>console.log(JSON.stringify(r,null,2))))
"