What is fast-xml-parser?
The fast-xml-parser npm package is a fast and powerful XML parser and validator that can convert XML to a JavaScript object, JSON, or a traversable JS object. It can also convert a JS object to XML. It is designed to be very fast and efficient, and it provides various options to control the XML parsing and validation process.
What are fast-xml-parser's main functionalities?
XML to JSON Conversion
Converts XML data to a JSON object. The 'parse' function takes an XML string and optional options object, and returns a JSON representation of the XML.
const { parse } = require('fast-xml-parser');
const xmlData = '<note><to>User</to><from>Library</from><heading>Reminder</heading><body>Don't forget to subscribe.</body></note>';
const options = {};
const jsonObj = parse(xmlData, options);
JSON to XML Conversion
Converts a JSON object to an XML string. The 'j2xParser' constructor takes an options object, and the 'parse' method converts the JSON object to an XML string.
const { j2xParser } = require('fast-xml-parser');
const parser = new j2xParser({});
const jsonObj = { note: { to: 'User', from: 'Library', heading: 'Reminder', body: 'Don't forget to subscribe.' } };
const xmlData = parser.parse(jsonObj);
XML Validation
Validates the XML string. The 'validate' function checks if the given XML string is well-formed and returns a validation result.
const { validate } = require('fast-xml-parser');
const xmlData = '<note><to>User</to><from>Library</from></note>';
const validationResult = validate(xmlData);
Traversable Object Creation
Creates a traversable JavaScript object from XML. The 'XMLParser' constructor creates a parser instance, and the 'parse' method converts the XML string into a traversable JS object.
const { XMLParser } = require('fast-xml-parser');
const xmlData = '<note><to>User</to><from>Library</from></note>';
const parser = new XMLParser();
const traversableObject = parser.parse(xmlData);
Other packages similar to fast-xml-parser
xml2js
xml2js is a similar npm package that provides XML to JavaScript object conversion. It includes options to customize the parsing process and supports builder options for converting back to XML. Compared to fast-xml-parser, xml2js may be slower but offers a more feature-rich API for handling complex XML structures.
xml-js
xml-js is another npm package that converts XML text to a JavaScript object and vice versa. It can also convert XML to JSON and supports compact and non-compact modes. While fast-xml-parser focuses on speed, xml-js provides a more extensive set of conversion options.
libxmljs
libxmljs is a Node.js package that provides bindings to the libxml C library. It allows for parsing and serializing XML and includes XPath and XSLT support. It is different from fast-xml-parser in that it is a binding to a native library, which may offer performance benefits and additional XML processing features.
Validate XML, Parse XML to JS/JSON and vice versa, or parse XML to Nimn rapidly without C/C++ based libraries and no callback
Main Features
- Validate XML data syntactically
- Transform XML to JSON or Nimn
- Transform JSON back to XML
- Works with node packages, in browser, and in CLI (press try me button above for demo)
- Faster than any pure JS implementation.
- It can handle big files (tested up to 100mb).
- Various options are available to customize the transformation
- You can parse CDATA as separate property.
- You can prefix attributes or group them to separate property. Or can ignore them from result completely.
- You can parse tag's or attribute's value to primitive type: string, integer, float, or boolean. And can optionally decode for HTML char.
- You can remove namespace from tag or attribute name while parsing
- It supports boolean attributes, if configured.
How to use
To use it in NPM package install it first
$npm install fast-xml-parser
or using yarn $yarn add fast-xml-parser
To use it from CLI Install it globally with -g
option.
$npm install fast-xml-parser -g
To use it on a webpage include it from parser.js or directly from CDN
XML to JSON or XML to Nimn
var fastXmlParser = require('fast-xml-parser');
var jsonObj = fastXmlParser.parse(xmlData);
var nimndata = fastXmlParser.parseToNimn(xmlData,schema);
var options = {
attributeNamePrefix : "@_",
attrNodeName: "attr",
textNodeName : "#text",
ignoreAttributes : true,
ignoreNameSpace : false,
allowBooleanAttributes : false,
parseNodeValue : true,
parseAttributeValue : false,
trimValues: true,
cdataTagName: "__cdata",
cdataPositionChar: "\\c",
attrValueProcessor: a => he.decode(a, {isAttributeValue: true}),
tagValueProcessor : a => he.decode(a)
};
if(fastXmlParser.validate(xmlData)=== true){
var jsonObj = fastXmlParser.parse(xmlData,options);
}
var tObj = fastXmlParser.getTraversalObj(xmlData,options);
var jsonObj = fastXmlParser.convertToJson(tObj,options);
var nimndata = fastXmlParser.convertTonimn(tObj,schema,options);
- NIMN (निम्न) data is the schema aware compressed form of data. It reduces JSON up to 50% or more of original data by removing field information. Check specification for more detail.
- Check nimnjs to know more about schema, json to nimndata and reverse transformation.
OPTIONS :
- attributeNamePrefix : prepend given string to attribute name for identification
- attrNodeName: (Valid name) Group all the attributes as properties of given name.
- ignoreAttributes : Ignore attributes to be parsed.
- ignoreNameSpace : Remove namespace string from tag and attribute names.
- allowBooleanAttributes : a tag can have attributes without any value
- parseNodeValue : Parse the value of text node to float, integer, or boolean.
- parseAttributeValue : Parse the value of an attribute to float, integer, or boolean.
- trimValues : trim string values of an attribute or node
- decodeHTMLchar : This options has been removed from 3.3.4. Instead, use tagValueProcessor, and attrValueProcessor. See above example.
- cdataTagName : If specified, parser parse CDATA as nested tag instead of adding it's value to parent tag.
- cdataPositionChar : It'll help to covert JSON back to XML without losing CDATA position.
- tagValueProcessor : Process tag value during transformation. Like HTML decoding, word capitalization, etc. Applicable in case of string only.
- attrValueProcessor : Process attribute value during transformation. Like HTML decoding, word capitalization, etc. Applicable in case of string only.
To use from command line
$xml2js [-ns|-a|-c|-v|-V] <filename> [-o outputfile.json]
$cat xmlfile.xml | xml2js [-ns|-a|-c|-v|-V] [-o outputfile.json]
- -ns : To include namespaces (by default ignored)
- -a : To ignore attributes
- -c : To ignore value conversion (i.e. "-3" will not be converted to number -3)
- -v : validate before parsing
- -V : only validate
To use it on webpage
var result = parser.validate(xmlData);
if(result !== true) cnosole.log(result.err);
var jsonObj = parser.parse(xmlData);
JSON / JS Object to XML
var Parser = require("fast-xml-parser").j2xParser;
var defaultOptions = {
attributeNamePrefix : "@_",
attrNodeName: "@",
textNodeName : "#text",
ignoreAttributes : true,
cdataTagName: "__cdata",
cdataPositionChar: "\\c",
format: false,
indentBy: " ",
supressEmptyNode: false,
tagValueProcessor: a=> he.encode(a, { useNamedReferences: true}),
attrValueProcessor: a=> he.encode(a, {isAttributeValue: isAttribute, useNamedReferences: true})
};
var parser = new Parser(defaultOptions);
var xml = parser.parse(json_or_js_obj);
OPTIONS :
With the correct options, you can get the almost original XML without losing any information.
- attributeNamePrefix : Identify attributes with this prefix otherwise treat them as a tag.
- attrNodeName: Identify attributes when they are grouped under single property.
- ignoreAttributes : Don't check for attributes. Treats everything as tag.
- encodeHTMLchar : This option has been removed from 3.3.4. Use tagValueProcessor, and attrValueProcessor instead. See above example.
- cdataTagName : If specified, parse matching tag as CDATA
- cdataPositionChar : Identify the position where CDATA tag should be placed. If it is blank then CDATA will be added in the last of tag's value.
- format : If set to true, then format the XML output.
- indentBy : indent by this char
when
format is set to true
- supressEmptyNode : If set to
true
, tags with no value (text or nested tags) are written as self closing tags. - tagValueProcessor : Process tag value during transformation. Like HTML encoding, word capitalization, etc. Applicable in case of string only.
- attrValueProcessor : Process attribute value during transformation. Like HTML encoding, word capitalization, etc. Applicable in case of string only.
Comparision
We've compared various libraries which transforms XML to JS. Most of them either are dependent on C/C++ libraries, or slow, or don't do reverse transformation.
Why not C/C++ based libraries?
C/C++ based libraries are no doubt faster than this library but they don't run in browser, and a user need to install extra supporting libraries on their computer.
Benchmark report
file size | fxp 3.0 validator (rps) | fxp 3.0 parser (rps) | xml2js 0.4.19 (rps) |
---|
1.5k | 16581.06758 | 14032.09323 | 4615.930805 |
1.5m | 14918.47793 | 13.23366098 | 5.90682005 |
13m | 1.834479235 | 1.135582008 | -1 |
1.3k with CDATA | 30583.35319 | 43160.52342 | 8398.556349 |
1.3m with CDATA | 27.29266471 | 52.68877009 | 7.966000795 |
1.6k with cdata,prolog,doctype | 27690.26082 | 41433.98547 | 7872.399268 |
98m | 0.08473858148 | 0.2600104004 | -1 |
- -1 indicates error or incorrect output.
Benchmark for JSON to XML
file size | fxp 3.2 js to xml | xml2js 0.4.19 builder |
---|
1.3k | 160148.9801 | 10384.99401 |
1.1m | 173.6374831 | 8.611884025 |
Worth to mention
-
निम्न (NIMN) : Schema aware object compression. 60% more compressed than JSON. 40% more compressed than msgpack.
-
imglab : Web based tool to label images for object. So that they can be used to train dlib or other object detectors. You can integrate 3rd party libraries for fast labeling.
-
अनुमार्गक (anumargak) : The fastest router for node web servers.
-
fast-lorem-ipsum : Generate lorem ipsum words, sentences, paragraph very quickly.
-
stubmatic : A stub server to mock behaviour of HTTP(s) / REST / SOAP services. You can also mock msgpack, and nimn format in easy way.
-
fastify-xml-body-parser : Fastify plugin / module to parse XML payload / body into JS object using fast-xml-parser.
-
Grapes : Flexible Regular expression engine (for java) which can be applied on char stream. (under development)
Contributors
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Lead Maintainers
Collaborators
Backers
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