XML to JSON Converter

What is the XML to JSON Converter?

The XML to JSON Converter is a critical modernization tool designed for developers working at the intersection of legacy enterprise systems and contemporary web architectures. XML (eXtensible Markup Language) dominated data exchange and configuration for nearly two decades, from the late 1990s through the 2010s. Enterprise systems, SOAP web services, configuration files, data feeds, and document storage all standardized on XML. However, the modern web has overwhelmingly adopted JSON for its simplicity, lightweight structure, and native JavaScript compatibility.

This converter bridges that generational divide, transforming XML's verbose, tag-based hierarchical structure into JSON's concise, bracket-based object notation. The transformation is more than syntactic—it requires intelligent mapping between fundamentally different data models. XML has elements, attributes, text content, namespaces, and processing instructions. JSON has objects, arrays, strings, numbers, booleans, and null. The converter must decide how XML attributes become JSON properties, when repeated elements should become arrays, how to handle mixed content, and how to preserve or simplify namespace information.

The primary use case is legacy system integration. Your organization has enterprise systems that output XML—perhaps a mainframe generating daily transaction reports, a SOAP-based inventory management service, or RSS/Atom feeds that need consumption by a modern React or Vue application. Rather than building XML parsers into your JavaScript frontend (adding bloat and complexity), you convert the XML to JSON server-side or client-side, then consume the familiar JSON structure with standard JavaScript methods.

API modernization is another critical application. Many organizations are migrating from SOAP (which uses XML for requests and responses) to REST (which typically uses JSON). During this transition period, you might need to maintain compatibility with SOAP clients while developing new REST endpoints. Converting SOAP XML responses to JSON allows gradual migration: existing SOAP consumers continue working unchanged, while new applications consume the same data as JSON. Configuration migration also benefits: converting XML configuration files (web.xml, app.config, pom.xml) to JSON equivalents when adopting frameworks and tools that expect JSON configuration.

How to Use the XML to JSON Converter

Using the converter is straightforward for well-formed XML, though understanding the mapping options helps achieve optimal results. Begin by pasting your XML into the input textarea. This could be a SOAP response copied from API testing tools like Postman or SoapUI, an XML file's contents opened in a text editor, RSS feed data, configuration file content, or data export from legacy systems. The converter accepts any well-formed XML, from simple single-element documents to complex nested hierarchies with namespaces and attributes.

Configure the conversion options based on your needs. "Compact output" removes whitespace-only text nodes that exist purely for XML formatting readability. XML documents often include newlines and indentation between elements, which become separate text nodes during parsing. For data-oriented XML (as opposed to document-oriented like HTML), these whitespace nodes are artifacts of formatting and should be removed. Enable this option for cleaner JSON output unless your XML has significant mixed content where whitespace matters semantically.

"Prefix attributes with @" (enabled by default) distinguishes XML attributes from child elements in the resulting JSON. For example, <user id="123"><name>Alice</name></user> becomes {"user": {"@id": "123", "name": "Alice"}}. The @ prefix makes it obvious that id was an attribute, not a nested element. This convention is common in XML-to-JSON conversion libraries and helps maintain semantic meaning from the original XML structure.

Click "Convert to JSON" to perform the transformation. The converter parses your XML using the browser's native DOMParser, validates the structure, and recursively converts the XML DOM tree into a JSON object. If your XML is malformed (missing closing tags, improperly nested elements, invalid characters), you'll receive specific parsing error messages. Valid XML is converted and displayed as beautified JSON in the output area, ready to be copied for use in your application or further processed with our other tools like the JSON Viewer or JSONPath Tester.

Understanding XML to JSON Structural Mapping

Element and Attribute Transformation

The fundamental building block of XML is the element: <elementName>content</elementName>. In JSON conversion, each element becomes a property in a JSON object, with the element name as the key and the content as the value. Simple text content becomes a string value: <name>Alice</name> converts to {"name": "Alice"}. Nested elements create nested JSON objects: <user><name>Alice</name></user> becomes {"user": {"name": "Alice"}}.

XML attributes present the first mapping challenge. Attributes are name-value pairs within element tags: <user id="123" active="true">. Unlike elements, attributes are always simple text values—they can't contain nested structure. In JSON, attributes typically become properties of the element's object, often prefixed to distinguish them from child elements. With @-prefixing enabled, <user id="123"><name>Alice</name></user> becomes {"user": {"@id": "123", "name": "Alice"}}.

When an element has both attributes and text content (no child elements), the structure becomes: <price currency="USD">29.99</price> converts to {"price": {"@currency": "USD", "#text": "29.99"}}. The #text property holds the actual text content, while attributes remain clearly identified. This preserves all information from the XML while maintaining a consistent JSON structure.

Handling Repeated Elements and Arrays

XML frequently uses repeated elements to represent collections: multiple <item> elements within a <list>, multiple <user> elements within <users>. JSON represents collections as arrays. The converter detects repeated element names at the same level and automatically creates JSON arrays.

For example:

<users>
  <user>Alice</user>
  <user>Bob</user>
  <user>Carol</user>
</users>

Converts to:

{
  "users": {
    "user": ["Alice", "Bob", "Carol"]
  }
}

Note that the element name ("user") is preserved as the array key. Some converters flatten this to {"users": ["Alice", "Bob", "Carol"]}, but this loses the semantic information about what each array element represents. The more explicit structure maintains the element name, which can be important for understanding and processing the data.

Namespace Challenges and Solutions

XML namespaces allow mixing elements from different schemas in the same document without name conflicts. SOAP envelopes heavily use namespaces: <soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/">. In JSON conversion, namespace prefixes typically become part of the property name: {"soap:Envelope": {...}}. This preserves the full qualified name but can make JSON more verbose and harder to work with.

Namespace URIs (the xmlns declarations) are often dropped in JSON conversion since JSON has no equivalent concept. If you need to preserve namespace URI mappings for semantic purposes or round-trip conversion, you'd need to store them separately, perhaps in a metadata object. For most practical purposes—consuming the data in a JavaScript application—the namespace URIs are not necessary, and prefixes (if meaningful) or the removal of prefixes (for simplicity) is sufficient.

Mixed Content and Its Complications

Mixed content—elements containing both text and child elements—is common in document-oriented XML (like XHTML or DocBook) but rare in data-oriented XML. An example: <paragraph>This is <bold>important</bold> text.</paragraph>. This contains text "This is ", an element <bold>, and more text " text." There's no natural JSON representation for this structure.

Different converters handle mixed content differently. Some create arrays mixing strings and objects: {"paragraph": ["This is ", {"bold": "important"}, " text."]}. Others preserve the XML as a string within JSON. Others still create complex structures with position markers. The lack of a standard mapping means mixed content often requires post-processing or domain-specific handling. If your XML contains significant mixed content, consider whether JSON is the right target format, or if you should extract only the data portions that map cleanly.

Practical Workflow Integration

The most common workflow is SOAP-to-REST migration. You have legacy SOAP web services that you can't immediately replace, but you want modern JavaScript applications to consume the data. The workflow: call the SOAP service (which returns XML), convert the SOAP response to JSON using this tool or a programmatic equivalent, extract the relevant data from the soap:Body element, and use it in your application. Over time, you implement REST endpoints that return JSON natively, gradually deprecating the SOAP services.

Configuration modernization is another key use case. You're migrating a Java application using web.xml configuration to a Node.js application using JSON config, or moving from .NET's app.config to a JSON-based configuration system. Convert the XML config to JSON, review the structure, adapt it to your new system's expected format, and you have a starting point rather than manually recreating all configuration from scratch.

Data feed consumption involves RSS feeds, Atom feeds, or XML data exports from business systems. These provide data in XML that you need to display in a web application. Convert to JSON once (perhaps as a server-side preprocessing step), then consume the JSON using standard JavaScript methods. This is more efficient than parsing XML in the browser, especially on mobile devices where XML parsing libraries add significant overhead.

Best Practices for Reliable Conversion

Validate your XML before conversion. Well-formed XML is essential—the converter will reject malformed XML with parsing errors. Use an XML validator or linter to catch issues like mismatched tags, improper nesting, or invalid characters. Understand the difference between well-formed XML (syntactically correct) and valid XML (conforms to a DTD or schema)—the converter requires well-formed XML but doesn't enforce schema validation.

Inspect the JSON output and understand its structure before using it in your application. XML-to-JSON conversion can produce unexpected nesting, especially with attributes, namespaces, and repeated elements. Use our JSON Viewer to explore the converted structure visually, identifying how your required data points are represented in the JSON hierarchy. This helps you write accurate data extraction code.

For complex XML, consider preprocessing before conversion. If you only need specific portions of a large XML document, extract those elements first using XPath or XML query tools. If namespaces are creating noise in the JSON, consider stripping or simplifying them before conversion. The cleaner and more focused your input XML, the cleaner your output JSON will be.

Be mindful of data type loss. XML is text-based like CSV—everything is a string unless you have schema information. JSON distinguishes strings from numbers and booleans, but the converter typically preserves everything as strings to avoid incorrect type inference. You may need to explicitly convert "123" to 123 or "true" to true in your application code if type-specific processing is required.

Data Format Resources

For XML specifications and best practices, visit the W3C XML official documentation. For JSON documentation, see JSON.org. For JavaScript XML and JSON handling, consult the MDN DOMParser docs.

Complete Your Data Workflow

After converting XML to JSON, validate the output with our JSON Validator to ensure structural correctness. Explore the converted structure visually with our JSON Viewer. Extract specific data points from the resulting JSON using our JSONPath Tester. Need to convert the JSON further? Use our JSON to CSV Converter for spreadsheet analysis.