How to convert XML to JSON in Python

Question

Possible Duplicate    Converting XML to JSON using Python        I m doing some work on App Engine and I need to convert an XML document being retrieved from a remote server into an equivalent JSON object   I m using xml dom minidom to parse the XML data being returned by urlfetch  I m also trying to use django utils simplejson to convert the parsed XML document into JSON  I m completely at a loss as to how to hook the two together  Below is the code I m tinkering with   from xml dom import minidom from django utils import simplejson as json   pseudo code that returns actual xml data as a string from remote server   result   urlfetch fetch url     get     dom   minidom parseString result content  json   simplejson load dom   self response out write json

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Jacob Smullyan wrote a utility called pesterfish which uses effbot s ElementTree to convert XML to JSON

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I think the XML format can be so diverse that it s impossible to write a code that could do this without a very strict defined XML format  Here is what I mean    lt persons gt       lt person gt           lt name gt Koen Bok lt  name gt           lt age gt 26 lt  age gt       lt  person gt       lt person gt           lt name gt Plutor Heidepeen lt  name gt           lt age gt 33 lt  age gt       lt  person gt   lt  persons gt    Would become    persons           name    Koen Bok    age   26         name    Plutor Heidepeen    age   33       But what would this be    lt persons gt       lt person name  Koen Bok  gt           lt locations name  defaults  gt               lt location long 123 lat 384   gt           lt  locations gt       lt  person gt   lt  persons gt    See what I mean   Edit  just found this article  http   www xml com pub a 2006 05 31 converting-between-xml-and-json html

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One possibility would be to use Objectify or ElementTree from the lxml module   An older version ElementTree is also available in the python xml etree module as well   Either of these will get your xml converted to Python objects which you can then use simplejson to serialize the object to JSON   While this may seem like a painful intermediate step  it starts making more sense when you re dealing with both XML and normal Python objects

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In general  you want to go from XML to regular objects of your language  since there are usually reasonable tools to do this  and it s the harder conversion   And then from Plain Old Object produce JSON -- there are tools for this  too  and it s a quite simple serialization  since JSON is  Object Notation   natural fit for serializing objects   I assume Python has its set of tools

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Jacob Smullyan wrote a utility called pesterfish which uses effbot s ElementTree to convert XML to JSON

User · Answer

I think the XML format can be so diverse that it s impossible to write a code that could do this without a very strict defined XML format  Here is what I mean    lt persons gt       lt person gt           lt name gt Koen Bok lt  name gt           lt age gt 26 lt  age gt       lt  person gt       lt person gt           lt name gt Plutor Heidepeen lt  name gt           lt age gt 33 lt  age gt       lt  person gt   lt  persons gt    Would become    persons           name    Koen Bok    age   26         name    Plutor Heidepeen    age   33       But what would this be    lt persons gt       lt person name  Koen Bok  gt           lt locations name  defaults  gt               lt location long 123 lat 384   gt           lt  locations gt       lt  person gt   lt  persons gt    See what I mean   Edit  just found this article  http   www xml com pub a 2006 05 31 converting-between-xml-and-json html

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I think the XML format can be so diverse that it s impossible to write a code that could do this without a very strict defined XML format  Here is what I mean    lt persons gt       lt person gt           lt name gt Koen Bok lt  name gt           lt age gt 26 lt  age gt       lt  person gt       lt person gt           lt name gt Plutor Heidepeen lt  name gt           lt age gt 33 lt  age gt       lt  person gt   lt  persons gt    Would become    persons           name    Koen Bok    age   26         name    Plutor Heidepeen    age   33       But what would this be    lt persons gt       lt person name  Koen Bok  gt           lt locations name  defaults  gt               lt location long 123 lat 384   gt           lt  locations gt       lt  person gt   lt  persons gt    See what I mean   Edit  just found this article  http   www xml com pub a 2006 05 31 converting-between-xml-and-json html

User · Answer

Jacob Smullyan wrote a utility called pesterfish which uses effbot s ElementTree to convert XML to JSON

User · Answer

One possibility would be to use Objectify or ElementTree from the lxml module   An older version ElementTree is also available in the python xml etree module as well   Either of these will get your xml converted to Python objects which you can then use simplejson to serialize the object to JSON   While this may seem like a painful intermediate step  it starts making more sense when you re dealing with both XML and normal Python objects

User · Answer

Jacob Smullyan wrote a utility called pesterfish which uses effbot s ElementTree to convert XML to JSON

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xmltodict  full disclosure  I wrote it  can help you convert your XML to a dict list string structure  following this  standard   It is Expat-based  so it s very fast and doesn t need to load the whole XML tree in memory   Once you have that data structure  you can serialize it to JSON   import xmltodict  json  o   xmltodict parse   lt e gt   lt a gt text lt  a gt   lt a gt text lt  a gt   lt  e gt    json dumps o       e     a     text    text

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I wrote a small command-line based Python script based on pesterfesh that does exactly this   https   github com hay xml2json

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I wrote a small command-line based Python script based on pesterfesh that does exactly this   https   github com hay xml2json

User · Answer

In general  you want to go from XML to regular objects of your language  since there are usually reasonable tools to do this  and it s the harder conversion   And then from Plain Old Object produce JSON -- there are tools for this  too  and it s a quite simple serialization  since JSON is  Object Notation   natural fit for serializing objects   I assume Python has its set of tools

User · Answer

xmltodict  full disclosure  I wrote it  can help you convert your XML to a dict list string structure  following this  standard   It is Expat-based  so it s very fast and doesn t need to load the whole XML tree in memory   Once you have that data structure  you can serialize it to JSON   import xmltodict  json  o   xmltodict parse   lt e gt   lt a gt text lt  a gt   lt a gt text lt  a gt   lt  e gt    json dumps o       e     a     text    text

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Soviut s advice for lxml objectify is good  With a specially subclassed simplejson  you can turn an lxml objectify result into json   import simplejson as json import lxml  class objectJSONEncoder json JSONEncoder        A specialized JSON encoder that can handle simple lxml objectify types        gt  gt  gt  from lxml import objectify        gt  gt  gt  obj   objectify fromstring   lt Book gt  lt price gt 1 50 lt  price gt  lt author gt W  Shakespeare lt  author gt  lt  Book gt                  gt  gt  gt  objectJSONEncoder   encode obj           price   1 5   author    W  Shakespeare                      def default self o           if isinstance o  lxml objectify IntElement               return int o          if isinstance o  lxml objectify NumberElement  or isinstance o  lxml objectify FloatElement               return float o          if isinstance o  lxml objectify ObjectifiedDataElement               return str o          if hasattr o     dict                   For objects with a   dict    return the encoding of the   dict               return o   dict           return json JSONEncoder default self  o    See the docstring for example of usage  essentially you pass the result of lxml objectify to the encode method of an instance of objectJSONEncoder  Note that Koen s point is very valid here  the solution above only works for simply nested xml and doesn t include the name of root elements  This could be fixed   I ve included this class in a gist here  http   gist github com 345559

User · Answer

One possibility would be to use Objectify or ElementTree from the lxml module   An older version ElementTree is also available in the python xml etree module as well   Either of these will get your xml converted to Python objects which you can then use simplejson to serialize the object to JSON   While this may seem like a painful intermediate step  it starts making more sense when you re dealing with both XML and normal Python objects

User · Answer

One possibility would be to use Objectify or ElementTree from the lxml module   An older version ElementTree is also available in the python xml etree module as well   Either of these will get your xml converted to Python objects which you can then use simplejson to serialize the object to JSON   While this may seem like a painful intermediate step  it starts making more sense when you re dealing with both XML and normal Python objects

User · Answer

I think the XML format can be so diverse that it s impossible to write a code that could do this without a very strict defined XML format  Here is what I mean    lt persons gt       lt person gt           lt name gt Koen Bok lt  name gt           lt age gt 26 lt  age gt       lt  person gt       lt person gt           lt name gt Plutor Heidepeen lt  name gt           lt age gt 33 lt  age gt       lt  person gt   lt  persons gt    Would become    persons           name    Koen Bok    age   26         name    Plutor Heidepeen    age   33       But what would this be    lt persons gt       lt person name  Koen Bok  gt           lt locations name  defaults  gt               lt location long 123 lat 384   gt           lt  locations gt       lt  person gt   lt  persons gt    See what I mean   Edit  just found this article  http   www xml com pub a 2006 05 31 converting-between-xml-and-json html

User · Answer

Soviut s advice for lxml objectify is good  With a specially subclassed simplejson  you can turn an lxml objectify result into json   import simplejson as json import lxml  class objectJSONEncoder json JSONEncoder        A specialized JSON encoder that can handle simple lxml objectify types        gt  gt  gt  from lxml import objectify        gt  gt  gt  obj   objectify fromstring   lt Book gt  lt price gt 1 50 lt  price gt  lt author gt W  Shakespeare lt  author gt  lt  Book gt                  gt  gt  gt  objectJSONEncoder   encode obj           price   1 5   author    W  Shakespeare                      def default self o           if isinstance o  lxml objectify IntElement               return int o          if isinstance o  lxml objectify NumberElement  or isinstance o  lxml objectify FloatElement               return float o          if isinstance o  lxml objectify ObjectifiedDataElement               return str o          if hasattr o     dict                   For objects with a   dict    return the encoding of the   dict               return o   dict           return json JSONEncoder default self  o    See the docstring for example of usage  essentially you pass the result of lxml objectify to the encode method of an instance of objectJSONEncoder  Note that Koen s point is very valid here  the solution above only works for simply nested xml and doesn t include the name of root elements  This could be fixed   I ve included this class in a gist here  http   gist github com 345559

[python] How to convert XML to JSON in Python?

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