Json Question posted in
Our archive of expertly curated questions and answers provides insights and solutions to common problems related to this popular data interchange format. From parsing and manipulating JSON data to integrating it with various programming languages and web services, our archive has got you covered. Start exploring today and take your JSON skills to the next level

Json – How can I convert a Python dictionary to an XML string and back while preserving the structure exactly?

I have a need to convert some json to xml and then back to json ideally preserving the structure. I’ve gotten quite close but I can’t find a way to use dicttoxml/xmltodict to not end up with each list of dictionaries being a dictionary with the key ‘item’ and the original dictionary it’s value.

e.g.

{'mydicts': [{'id': 1, 'name': 'alice'}]}

becomes:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><root><mydicts><item><id>1</id><name>alice</name></item></mydicts></root>

ends up as:

{'mydicts': [{'item': {'id': '1', 'name': 'alice'}}]}

I had to use force_list as well originally. My last resort will be some post-processing code to make this change but I’d prefer to avoid that. Here is some sample code of what I have now:

import xmltodict
import dicttoxml

original_json = {
    "mydicts": [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "name": "alice"
        }
    ]
}


xml_string = dicttoxml.dicttoxml(original_json, attr_type=False).decode()

new_json = xmltodict.parse(xml_string, xml_attribs=False, force_list={'mydicts'})['root']

print(new_json)

Other solutions are perfectly fine as well.

Tags:

2

Answers


  1. 0

    It works straight forward using xmltodict.unparse() by surrounding the original dict with a root object

    import xmltodict

original_json = {
    "mydicts": [
        {
            "id": 1,
            "name": "alice"
        },
        {
            "id": 2,
            "name": "bob"
        }
    ]
}

tmp_json = {}
tmp_json['root'] = original_json

xml_string = xmltodict.unparse(tmp_json)

print(xml_string)

new_json = xmltodict.parse(xml_string, xml_attribs=False)['root']

print(new_json)

    Result

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<root><mydicts><id>1</id><name>alice</name></mydicts><mydicts><id>2</id><name>bob</name></mydicts></root>
{'mydicts': [{'id': '1', 'name': 'alice'}, {'id': '2', 'name': 'bob'}]}
    Login or Signup to reply.
  2. 0

    As addition to the answer from @LMC there is also a Modul json2xml:

    from json2xml import json2xml
from json2xml.utils import readfromurl, readfromstring, readfromjson

data = readfromstring('{"mydicts": [{"id": 1, "name": "alice"}]}')

print(json2xml.Json2xml(data, wrapper="all", pretty=True).to_xml())

    Output:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<all>
    <mydicts type="list">
        <item type="dict">
            <id type="int">1</id>
            <name type="str">alice</name>
        </item>
    </mydicts>
</all>
    Login or Signup to reply.
Please signup or login to give your own answer.

Back To Top
Search