XML ⇄ JSON Converter

Worked example: attributes and element text

This product record, pasted with XML → JSON selected:

<product id="p1">
  <name>Desk Lamp</name>
  <price currency="INR">1499</price>
  <sku>00731</sku>
</product>

comes out as:

{
  "product": {
    "name": "Desk Lamp",
    "price": {
      "#text": 1499,
      "@_currency": "INR"
    },
    "sku": "00731",
    "@_id": "p1"
  }
}

• The id attribute becomes "@_id", listed after the child elements.
• <price> has an attribute and text, so it becomes an object: the text under #text, the attribute under @_currency.
• Text that looks like a number becomes a JSON number (1499), but a code with a leading zero stays a string, so "00731" keeps its zeros.

One item or a list? XML can't say

XML has no syntax for "a list with one item", so the same element can come back as two different JSON shapes. Here Asha has two tags and Ravi has one:

<customers>
  <customer>
    <name>Asha</name>
    <tag>gst</tag>
    <tag>annual</tag>
  </customer>
  <customer>
    <name>Ravi</name>
    <tag>gst</tag>
  </customer>
</customers>

{
  "customers": {
    "customer": [
      { "name": "Asha", "tag": ["gst", "annual"] },
      { "name": "Ravi", "tag": "gst" }
    ]
  }
}

Asha's tag is an array and Ravi's is a plain string (the output is shown here with each customer on one line). Code that loops over tag fails on Ravi, so accept both shapes, for example with [].concat(customer.tag ?? []). The same thing happens in reverse: with JSON → XML, [{"name":"Asha","tag":["gst","annual"]},{"name":"Ravi","tag":["gst"]}] becomes <root> with one <item> per object, and Ravi's one-item array is written as a single <tag>gst</tag>, which converts back as the string "gst", not ["gst"].

What doesn't survive

Comments are dropped, because JSON has nowhere to put them. <config><!-- owner: payments team --><retries>3</retries></config> converts to {"config":{"retries":3}}, and converting that back can't restore the note. Keep the original XML if comments or processing instructions carry information.

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