Q: Will special characters like & and < in my text break the generated XML?

No — text and attribute values are escaped automatically (& becomes &, < becomes <, and so on), so any string value converts to valid, well-formed XML regardless of what characters it contains.

Question 1

How do I make a JSON key become an XML attribute instead of a child element?

Accepted Answer

Prefix the key with @ — {"user": {"@id": "5", "name": "Alice"}} produces Alice. Any key without the @ prefix becomes a nested child element instead. This is the one convention worth remembering since JSON and XML don't map onto each other automatically.

Question 2

What happens if my JSON object has more than one top-level key?

Accepted Answer

XML documents can only have a single root element, but a JSON object can have any number of top-level keys — so if there is exactly one, it becomes the root tag; if there are two or more (or the top level is an array), everything gets wrapped in a synthetic <root> element instead, since there is no other valid way to represent it.

Question 3

XML doesn't have arrays — how does a JSON array get converted?

Accepted Answer

Each item in the array becomes its own sibling element with the same tag name — {"tags": {"tag": ["a", "b"]}} becomes ab, not a single element containing a list. Converting that XML back to JSON (via XML to JSON) recognizes repeated sibling tags and turns them back into an array automatically.

Question 4

Will special characters like & and < in my text break the generated XML?

Accepted Answer

No — text and attribute values are escaped automatically (& becomes &, < becomes <, and so on), so any string value converts to valid, well-formed XML regardless of what characters it contains.

JSON to XML

Well-Formed Output

Handles Large Documents

Local Processing

Frequently Asked Questions