JSON to XML converter

How the JSON is turned into XML

Each key becomes an element with the value inside it. A few keys have special meanings, so you can control the XML you get:

{
  "order": {
    "@id": "1042",
    "customer": "Maya Chen",
    "items": {
      "item": [
        { "@sku": "MUG-01", "name": "Ceramic mug" },
        { "@sku": "TEA-12", "name": "Green tea" }
      ]
    },
    "paid": true,
    "giftNote": null
  }
}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<order id="1042">
  <customer>Maya Chen</customer>
  <items>
    <item sku="MUG-01">
      <name>Ceramic mug</name>
    </item>
    <item sku="TEA-12">
      <name>Green tea</name>
    </item>
  </items>
  <paid>true</paid>
  <giftNote/>
</order>

• A key that starts with @ becomes an attribute, so "@id" is written as id="1042".
• An array repeats its key once per item, so item appears twice.
• A "#text" key holds an element’s text when it also has attributes, as in { "@currency": "USD", "#text": "24.50" }.
• null and empty strings become empty elements, like <giftNote/>. Numbers and true/false are written as text, exactly as they appear in the JSON.

These are the same rules the XML to JSON converter uses, so XML converted to JSON and back comes out the same, apart from comments.

The root element

XML needs exactly one outer element. If your JSON is an object with a single key, like order above, that key becomes the root. Anything else is wrapped in <root>: an object with several keys, a top-level array (each item becomes an <item>), or a single value. To choose the name yourself, put your JSON inside an object with that one key.

Arrays don’t get a wrapper

An array becomes a series of elements with the same name, without an element around them:

{ "tags": ["api", "json"] }

<root>
  <tags>api</tags>
  <tags>json</tags>
</root>

If the XML you need has a wrapper, like <tags><tag>api</tag></tags>, nest the array in an object: { "tags": { "tag": ["api", "json"] } }. That’s what items does in the first example. An empty array produces no elements at all.

Keys that can’t be tag names

XML tag names can’t contain spaces, can’t start with a digit, and can’t start with “xml”. JSON keys can be anything, so keys like "first name" or "2024" are changed to first_name and _2024, and the tool lists every key it changed. Characters like & and < in values are escaped for you.

Doing it in code

# Python, with xmltodict (pip install xmltodict)
import json, xmltodict
with open("order.json") as f:
    print(xmltodict.unparse(json.load(f), pretty=True))

// JavaScript, with fast-xml-parser (npm install fast-xml-parser)
import { XMLBuilder } from "fast-xml-parser";
const builder = new XMLBuilder({ ignoreAttributes: false, attributeNamePrefix: "@", format: true });
const xml = builder.build(JSON.parse(text));

# Command line, with yq
yq -p json -o xml order.json

xmltodict uses the same @ and #text keys as this page, and the single top-level key becomes the root element, the same as here. fast-xml-parser expects attributes as @_id unless you set attributeNamePrefix, as above.