JSON to XML Converter

How This JSON-to-XML Mapping Actually Works

JSON and XML don't map onto each other cleanly, because JSON has no concept of an attribute — every value is either a key/value pair, an array entry, or a scalar. This converter resolves that mismatch by turning every object key into a child element rather than an attribute, so {"user": {"id": "42"}} becomes <user><id>42</id></user>, never <user id="42">. If your target schema expects attributes (a common requirement in SOAP/WSDL contracts), you'll need a post-processing step or a different tool.

JSON keys also don't follow XML naming rules — XML element names can't start with a digit and can't contain spaces or most punctuation. This converter strips leading digits and replaces disallowed characters with an underscore automatically, so a key like "2nd place" becomes the element <nd_place>. That's a lossy, one-way transformation: converting the resulting XML back to JSON will not restore your original key names.

A Quirk Worth Knowing: Array Item Naming

The Array Item Name option only takes effect when the JSON you paste is itself a top-level array (e.g. ["a","b","c"]). When an array is the value of an object key — the far more common case, e.g. {"tags":["red","blue"]} — each item is instead wrapped in a repeated element named after that key, producing <tags>red</tags><tags>blue</tags> rather than a generic <item> wrapper. If you're expecting a fixed "item" tag around every array element regardless of where the array sits, check your output — you may need to adjust the JSON shape before converting, or restructure the XML afterward.

null values become self-closing tags (<field/>) rather than being dropped, so a round trip through this converter preserves the fact that a key existed with no value — useful if the receiving system distinguishes "absent" from "null." Strings are escaped for the five XML special characters (& < > " ') automatically, so JSON values containing raw ampersands or angle brackets won't break the output.

When You Actually Need This

The realistic reasons to go from JSON to XML are narrower than they used to be: talking to a SOAP or WS-* endpoint that still expects an XML envelope, feeding a legacy ETL pipeline or EDI-adjacent system built around XML schemas (XSD) rather than JSON Schema, generating config files for tools (Ant, MSBuild, some CI systems) that only read XML, or producing an XML payload for a partner API that validates against a fixed schema. In each of these, check whether the receiving system needs attributes — if it does, this element-only mapping won't satisfy validation and you'll need to hand-adjust the output.

Frequently Asked Questions