xml2json

Convert XML to JSON with Python 3 and defusedxml or plain ElementTree

Usage

$ ./xml2json.py -h
usage: xml2json.py [-h] [--unsafe] [infile]
Convert an XML file to JSON.
positional arguments:
infile
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--unsafe do not use defusedxml: only for known-safe XML!

Examples

# Normal usage for potentially unsafe XML files:
pip install defusedxml
./xml2json.py sample_input.xml > sample_output.json
# Without defusedxml
./xml2json.py --unsafe sample_input.xml > sample_output.json
# Also supports reading from stdin:
./xml2json.py < sample_input.xml > sample_output.json

Conversion logic

Each element gets converted into an object of the form: { tagName : {@text: optional, @children: optional, ...attributes} }

Input

<rootelemfoo="bar">
some text
<child1>
<child2attr1="baz"attr2="foo"/>
<child2attr2="baz"attr3="foo"/>
</child1>
</rootelem>

Output

{
"rootelem": {
"foo": "bar",
"@text": "some text",
"@children": [
{
"child1": {
"@children": [
{
"child2": {
"attr1": "baz",
"attr2": "foo"
}
},
{
"child2": {
"attr2": "baz",
"attr3": "foo"
}
}
]
}
}
]
}
}