Convert XML to JSON in Python

XML conversion is very useful if we work on an API that returns data in JSON format and the source of data is in XML format.

JSON

A JSON file reserves the simple data structures and objects in JSON format, Json is a standard data exchange format. Json is used for data transmission among a server and web application.

The data in JSON object is in the form of a key and value pair. The keys refer to strings and the values are JSON types and these both are separated by a colon. By using the text editor Json files can be edited.

XML

XML is used for storing the data. It is case-sensitive. The markup items are defined with XML and produce personalized markup language. An element is defined as the basic unit. There is no predefined tags in XML. It clarifies sharing of data, transport of data, changes in the platform. 

Converting XML to JSON

There is no built-in library included in Python for working with XML. But we can do this using the xmltodict library and can be installed via PIP. First, we need to install xmltodict module via PIP

pip install xmltodict

Now, we need to import the inbulit module JSON by using the import keyword

import json

Reading the XML file

We can easily read the XML file with below code snippet

with open("xml_file.xml") as xml_file:

    data_dict = xmltodict.parse(xml_file.read())

Closing the XML file

xml_file.close()

Convert the xml_data into a dictionary

json_data = json.dumps(data_dict)

Writing the json_data to the output file

with open("data.json", "w") as json_file:

        json_file.write(json_data)

Closing the output file

json_file.close()

Example:

import xmltodict

import json

    obj = xmltodict.parse("""<teachers>

    <teacher memberid = "10001">

    <name> Akash mishra </name>

    <gender> male </gender>

    <subjects>

    <subject name= "Math" class= "KG" />

    <subject name= "Science" class= "PG" />

    <subject name= "Social Science" class = "LKG" />

    </subjects>

    </teacher>

    <teacher memberid = "10002">

    <name> Anuj rana </name>

    <gender> male </gender>

    <subjects>

    <subject name= "Math" class= "KG" />

    <subject name= "Science" class= "PG" />

    <subject name= "Social Science" class = "LKG" />

    </subjects>

    </teacher>

    </teachers>""")

    print(json.dumps(obj))

Output:

{"teachers": {"teacher": [{"@memberid": "10001", "name": "Akash mishra", "gender": "male", "subjects": {"subject": [{"@name": "Math", "@class": "KG"}, {"@name": "Science", "@class": "PG"}, {"@name": "Social Science", "@class": "LKG"}]}}, {"@memberid": "10002", "name": "Anuj rana", "gender": "male", "subjects": {"subject": [{"@name": "Math", "@class": "KG"}, {"@name": "Science", "@class": "PG"}, {"@name": "Social Science", "@class": "LKG"}]}}]}}

The xmltodict.parse() method is used for converting the XML document to a Python object.

Convert XML to Python Object

There is another library named untangle that is used for converting XML.

We can install it by using the below command

pip install untangle

Example:

import untangle

obj = untangle.parse("""

    <employees>

<employee>

   <name>Akash Sharma</name>

            <role>Software engineer</role>

            <age>29</age>

        </employee>

    </employees>

""")

#Access the name

print(obj.employees.employee.name.cdata)

Output:

Akash Sharma

Reading with untangle.parse method

import untangle

obj = untangle.parse("Employee.xml")

print(obj.employees.employee.name.cdata)

Output:

Akash Sharma

XML to JSON with Pandas

We can also convert XML to JSON with Pandas module. Pandas are essentially used for data cleaning in data science.

Installation

If we want to read XML with Pandas we need to install the pandas-read-xml via PIP. It can be installed by using the below command.

pip install pandas-read-xml

With using the below code we can conver XML to JSON in Pandas

import pandas_read_xml as pdx

df = pdx.read_xml("Student.xml")

print(df.to_json())

The Pandas module requires other modules for working(idna, numpy, chardet, pytz, six, python-dateutil, pandas, certifi, urllib3, requests, pyarrow). Because of this, it takes much memory so, the xmltodict method is highly efficient for XML to JSON conversion.

XML to JSON with Beautifulsoup

The main purpose of the Beautifulsoup library is parsing the HTML.It can also parse XML using the third-party parser known as lxml.Firstly, we need to install both modules.These can be easily installed with the below command

pip install beautifulsoup4

pip install lxml

Example:

from bs4 import BeautifulSoup

import json

#Loading xml

xml_parser = BeautifulSoup(open('Employee.xml'), 'xml')

Extracting the suitable information

name = xml_parser.find('name').contents[0]

age = xml_parser.find('age').contents[0]

role = xml_parser.find('role').contents[0]

employee = {

    'name':name,

    'age': age,

    'role': role

}

print(json.dumps(employee))

Output:

{"name": "Akash", "age": "29", "role": "Software engineer"}

Conclusion

In the above tutorial, you have understood how to convert the XML to JSON with different methods. We have seen different methods in the conversion of XML to JSON.