xmltojson

Warnings

• gotcha Conversion of single-element XML lists to JSON arrays can be inconsistent. XML does not inherently distinguish between a single element and a list of one element. Some converters might output a single JSON object instead of a JSON array containing one object, which can break consuming code expecting an array.
  Fix: Manually inspect generated JSON for array-like structures that might become single objects. Consider post-processing the JSON or using a library that allows explicit schema-driven conversion if strict array handling is required. The library might offer configuration for this, but it's a common XML-to-JSON challenge.
• gotcha XML is fundamentally text-based, so numerical, boolean, or null values in XML often get converted to strings in JSON. This can lead to type mismatches in downstream applications expecting specific JSON data types.
  Fix: Client-side type coercion is often necessary after conversion. If possible, define a JSON schema and validate/transform the output against it, or use custom parsing logic to detect and convert string representations of numbers/booleans/nulls to their correct JSON types.
• gotcha XML attributes and namespaces are handled according to the underlying conversion logic (likely `xmltodict`). By default, attributes might be prefixed (e.g., with '@') or even omitted, and namespaces may be stripped or embedded in the key names, which might not be intuitive or desired.
  Fix: Consult `xmltodict` documentation for its specific conventions on attributes and namespaces. If `xmltojson` provides configuration options to control this, utilize them. Otherwise, be prepared to clean or transform the JSON output to match the expected structure regarding attributes and namespaces.
• gotcha Providing malformed or empty XML input can lead to conversion failures, often manifesting as an 'ExecutionFailed' error (if using it in a larger pipeline or CLI context), or parsing exceptions.
  Fix: Always validate XML input for well-formedness before passing it to `xmltojson.parse()`. Implement robust error handling around conversion calls to catch and manage potential parsing exceptions.

Install

• pip install xmltojson Install stable version

Imports

• xmltojson

  import xmltojson

Quickstart

Demonstrates how to convert a simple XML string to JSON using the `parse` method.

import xmltojson

xml_string = '<person><name>Alice</name><age>30</age></person>'
json_output = xmltojson.parse(xml_string)

print(json_output)
# Expected output: {"person": {"name": "Alice", "age": "30"}} (exact formatting may vary)