JSON2XML

Streaming JSON to XML converter

Reads any JSON data and produces XML Representation of JSON specified in XSLT 3.0.

JSON2XML enables JSON transformation with XSLT even without having an XSLT 3.0 processor. You can simply pre-process the data by having JSON2XML before the transformation, and pipeline it into an XSLT 2.0 stylesheet, for example. That way your stylesheet stays forward compatible with XSLT 3.0, as the XML representation is exactly the same.

Invalid characters

The JSON input might contain characters (for example, form feed \f) which would be invalid in the XML output. The json-to-xml() function specifies character escape rules that apply in this case.

JSON2XML currently implements only the default escape rule:

Any characters or codepoints that are not valid XML characters (for example, unpaired surrogates) are passed to the fallback function as described below; in the absence of a fallback function, they are replaced by the Unicode REPLACEMENT CHARACTER (xFFFD).

Build

mvn clean install

That should produce an executable JAR file target/json2xml-jar-with-dependencies.jar in which dependency libraries will be included.

Maven

Each version is released to the Maven central repository as com.atomgraph.etl.json/json2xml

Usage

The JSON data is read from stdin, UTF-8 encoding is expected. The resulting XML data is written to stdout.

JSON2XML is available as a .jar as well as a Docker image atomgraph/json2xml (recommended).

Example

JSON data in city-distances.json:

{
  "desc"    : "Distances between several cities, in kilometers.",
  "updated" : "2014-02-04T18:50:45",
  "uptodate": true,
  "author"  : null,
  "cities"  : {
    "Brussels": [
      {"to": "London",    "distance": 322},
      {"to": "Paris",     "distance": 265},
      {"to": "Amsterdam", "distance": 173}
    ],
    "London": [
      {"to": "Brussels",  "distance": 322},
      {"to": "Paris",     "distance": 344},
      {"to": "Amsterdam", "distance": 358}
    ],
    "Paris": [
      {"to": "Brussels",  "distance": 265},
      {"to": "London",    "distance": 344},
      {"to": "Amsterdam", "distance": 431}
    ],
    "Amsterdam": [
      {"to": "Brussels",  "distance": 173},
      {"to": "London",    "distance": 358},
      {"to": "Paris",     "distance": 431}
    ]
  }
}

Java execution from shell:

cat city-distances.json | java -jar json2xml-jar-with-dependencies.jar > city-distances.xml

Alternatively, Docker execution from shell:

cat city-distances.json | docker run --rm -i -a stdin -a stdout -a stderr atomgraph/json2xml > city-distances.xml

Note that you need to bind stdin/stdout/stderr when running JSON2XML as a Docker container.

Output in city-distances.xml (indented for clarity):

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<map xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions">
  <string key="desc">Distances between several cities, in kilometers.</string>
  <string key="updated">2014-02-04T18:50:45</string>
  <boolean key="uptodate">true</boolean>
  <null key="author"/>
  <map key="cities">
    <array key="Brussels">
      <map>
        <string key="to">London</string>
        <number key="distance">322</number>
      </map>
      <map>
        <string key="to">Paris</string>
        <number key="distance">265</number>
      </map>
      <map>
        <string key="to">Amsterdam</string>
        <number key="distance">173</number>
      </map>
    </array>
    <array key="London">
      <map>
        <string key="to">Brussels</string>
        <number key="distance">322</number>
      </map>
      <map>
        <string key="to">Paris</string>
        <number key="distance">344</number>
      </map>
      <map>
        <string key="to">Amsterdam</string>
        <number key="distance">358</number>
      </map>
    </array>
    <array key="Paris">
      <map>
        <string key="to">Brussels</string>
        <number key="distance">265</number>
      </map>
      <map>
        <string key="to">London</string>
        <number key="distance">344</number>
      </map>
      <map>
        <string key="to">Amsterdam</string>
        <number key="distance">431</number>
      </map>
    </array>
    <array key="Amsterdam">
      <map>
        <string key="to">Brussels</string>
        <number key="distance">173</number>
      </map>
      <map>
        <string key="to">London</string>
        <number key="distance">358</number>
      </map>
      <map>
        <string key="to">Paris</string>
        <number key="distance">431</number>
      </map>
    </array>
  </map>
</map>

Dependencies

• javax.json