[node.js] The best node module for XML parsing

As far as XML parsing is concerned, which is the best node module, that I can use for XML parsing?

This question is related to node.js xml-parsing

The answer is


You can try xml2js. It's a simple XML to JavaScript object converter. It gets your XML converted to a JS object so that you can access its content with ease.

Here are some other options:

  1. libxmljs
  2. xml-stream
  3. xmldoc
  4. cheerio – implements a subset of core jQuery for XML (and HTML)

I have used xml2js and it has worked fine for me. The rest you might have to try out for yourself.


This answer concerns developers for Windows. You want to pick an XML parsing module that does NOT depend on node-expat. Node-expat requires node-gyp and node-gyp requires you to install Visual Studio on your machine. If your machine is a Windows Server, you definitely don't want to install Visual Studio on it.

So, which XML parsing module to pick?

Save yourself a lot of trouble and use either xml2js or xmldoc. They depend on sax.js which is a pure Javascript solution that doesn't require node-gyp.

Both libxmljs and xml-stream require node-gyp. Don't pick these unless you already have Visual Studio on your machine installed or you don't mind going down that road.

Update 2015-10-24: it seems somebody found a solution to use node-gyp on Windows without installing VS: https://github.com/nodejs/node-gyp/issues/629#issuecomment-138276692