XML to JSON Converter Online 2026 - Fast, Secure & Private
Convert XML to JSON online instantly. Transforming XML structures into easy-to-use JSON objects. 100% client-side privacy. Free online tool.
Key Features
- ✅ Compact or Non-compact JSON output
- ✅ Attribute handling
- ✅ Deeply nested structure support
- ✅ Fast and secure client-side conversion
How to Use
- Paste your XML content or upload an XML file
- The tool will automatically detect the XML structure
- Click the Convert button to generate the JSON equivalent
- Copy or download the resulting JSON for your application
Expert FAQ
- XML attributes and child text both describe the same element — how does the converter decide which becomes which JSON key?
Attributes are emitted as keys prefixed with "@" (e.g. <item id="5"> becomes {"@id": "5"}), and the element's own text is placed under a "#text" key when the element also has attributes or children. If an element has only text and no attributes, it collapses to a plain string value instead — there is no single official standard for this, every XML-to-JSON library (this one included) makes its own convention, so re-check downstream code if you swap converters. - A repeated tag becomes an array, but what happens if that tag only appears once in a particular document?
This is the single most common bug in hand-rolled XML-to-JSON code: a single <item> becomes a JSON object, while two or more <item> siblings become an array. Consumers that assume "always an array" will crash on documents with exactly one item. This tool always normalizes repeated sibling elements to arrays regardless of count, specifically to avoid that class of bug — if you're replacing a different converter, check whether it does the same. - How are XML namespaces and prefixes represented?
Namespace prefixes (e.g. soap:Envelope) are preserved literally as part of the key name rather than resolved to their full namespace URI, since most JSON consumers key off the prefix they already expect from the source system. If you need namespace-aware processing (common with SOAP/WSDL payloads), validate the prefix mapping in the original XML's xmlns declarations first. - Does it preserve number and boolean types, or does everything come out as a string?
XML has no native data types — every value is text — so the raw conversion keeps everything as a string (e.g. "42", "true"). This tool does not silently guess types, because auto-coercion is a common source of subtle bugs (a zip code of "00501" becoming the number 501). If you need typed JSON, cast specific fields explicitly after conversion rather than relying on automatic inference.
Technical Details
Converting XML to JSON is not a lossless, mechanical operation — XML's data model supports things JSON has no equivalent for: attributes versus child elements, mixed content (text interleaved with child tags), comments, processing instructions, and namespace prefixes. Any converter has to make policy decisions about how to flatten these into JSON's simpler object/array/string/number model. This tool follows the de-facto convention used by most JS XML parsers: attributes become "@name" keys, element text content becomes either a plain string value or a "#text" key (when siblings or attributes are also present), and repeated sibling tags are always normalized into arrays — even when only one instance appears in a given document — to keep downstream code from breaking on documents that happen to have a single match. CDATA sections are unwrapped to their raw text. Self-closing tags (<empty/>) become an empty object {} rather than null, since XML self-closing elements can still carry attributes. The biggest practical gotcha when migrating a legacy SOAP/XML API to JSON is schema drift between sample payloads: a field that's singular in your test fixture but repeatable in production will silently change shape (object vs array) for consumers who didn't design for it defensively. Always test the conversion against a payload that exercises the zero/one/many cases for every repeatable element, not just a single happy-path sample.