README.md

jsontoxml

This is a library designed to render js objects as xml. Its not made to parse or otherwise edit existing xml/html structures. For that and perhaps as a compliment to this you can use jsdom or xml2js for editing existing markup.

this will do a good job rendering json as xml but apis that require xml expect odd things mostly related to elements with attributes and implicit array like keys that make formatting your json a little tricky.

example

var jsonxml = require('jsontoxml');

var xml = jsonxml({
	node:'text content',
	parent:[
		{name:'taco',text:'beef taco',children:{salsa:'hot!'}},
		{name:'taco',text:'fish taco',attrs:{mood:'sad'},children:[
			{name:'salsa',text:'mild'},
			'hi',
			{name:'salsa',text:'weak',attrs:{type:2}}
		]},
		{name:'taco',attrs:'mood="party!"'}
	],
	parent2:{
		hi:'is a nice thing to say',
		node:'i am another not special child node'
		date:function(){
			return (new Date())+'';
		}
	}
})

console.log(xml);

outputs:

<node>text content</node>
<parent>
	<taco>
		beef taco
		<salsa>hot!</salsa>
	</taco>
	<taco mood='sad'>
		fish taco
		<salsa>mild</salsa>
		hi
		<salsa type="2">weak</salsa>
	</taco>
	<taco mood='party!'/>
</parent>
<parent2>
	<hi>is a nice thing to say</hi>
	<node>i am another not special child node</node>
	<date>Sun Sep 26 2010 17:27:29 GMT-0700 (PDT)</date>
</parent2>

API

jsontoxml (obj,options)

• a valid json structure to interpret or a json string
• returns an xml string
  • options is optional. it can be true (add generic xml header) or an object. If an object, valid options are:
    • escape
      • calls escape on all values
      • attribute values if attribute values are specified as an object
    • xmlHeader can either be boolan (add generic <?xml …?> header) or an object. If an object valid options are:
      • standalone if true, the <?xml …?> gets an additional attribute standalone="true".
    • docType if defined gets added as the <!DOCTYPE …> contents (unescaped).
    • prettyPrint if truthy the output gets a rudimentary pretty print (good for debugging, don't expect too much)
    • indent specify what unit you would like to indent by (spaces, tabstop, nothing - pass an empty string)
    • removeIllegalNameCharacters replace illegal XML element Name characters with '_'

jsontoxml.escape (string)

• returns string with xml entities escaped
• escapes "" & < >

jsontoxml.cdata (string)

• wraps string with <![CDATA[ ]]>
• removes all occurences of close cdata (]]>) in input text

more description

I made this because i wanted to abstract away the fact that antiquated external systems require post data as xml and i wanted to expose a standard js calling api like my other interfaces.

I did not want to instantiate an entire dom to perform simple updates to tags in lower level functions (like injecting api keys) when top level api call specific functions start building the xml string.