XML to JSON conversion in java

Question

I am aware of several open source java libraries that will convert XML to JSON.

However, I am looking for a library (or way) that will suppress the leading @ that is prepended to the element attribute. So, for example, given the JSON string below:

{ "description":
      { "@lang":"en-us",
        "@maxlength":"500",
        "#text":"Vitamin D Supplementation"
      }
}

I would like to produce the following JSON string (notice the missing @ in front of "lang" and "maxlength"):

{ "description":
      { "lang":"en-us",
        "maxlength":"500",
        "#text":"Vitamin D Supplementation"
      }
}

As far as I can tell, no libraries offer a way to do this. Maybe there is a way to accomplish this using Regex, though I would have to be careful of not stripping valid @ characters in data?

I suspect the problem with doing that is that you run the risk of a collision between the attribute @foo and the child element(s) foo. You could certainly post-process the JSON to alter any dictionary keys that start with @, but then you need some other strategy to deal with collisions. — Darien
– Darien, Commented Jun 9, 2011 at 18:26
That won't be a problem as another library will be consuming the JSON string and will use type inference as a way of distinguishing between attributes and elements. — TM Stevens
– TM Stevens, Commented Jun 9, 2011 at 18:39
It'll still be a problem because you can't do this in JSON: {"foo":"hi","foo":{}}, you never get a chance to look at the two payloads because it isn't valid to have duplicate keys. — Darien
– Darien, Commented Jun 9, 2011 at 18:43
So you're saying that I can't do that because the idea of duplicate keys in the JSON spec is illegal, or do you mean I can't do that because I'll run into errors when attempting to construct a JSON string (using a library) which has duplicate keys? — TM Stevens
– TM Stevens, Commented Jun 9, 2011 at 19:08

T-Bull · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-09 20:28:32Z

1

String.replace("\"@", "\"") or what?

UPDATE

To prevent replacing the @ within a string value, you could use the regexp version of replace. You'd look for the @ sign preceded by " and not preceded by some X, where X is a colon (:) followed by any number of whitespace. You'd replace by the " again.

A less hacky approach would be to have a library stream the json in a content-event-like fashion, catch any object member name events, replace such member names that begin with an @ accordingly and then throw them back to the event stream. That stream would then be converted to JSON text again. (I'm currently working on a library that provides such functionality, but it's not yet published, unfortunately.)

Similarly, you could hook in the XML to JSON translation process. The translator would have to stream the XML to some sort of XML content events, which are later converted to JSON content events, which are then stringified to JSON text. (Ok, that's how I would do it.) If you could plug in at either side of the JSON events stage, you could easily translate specific object member names. Obviously the library you use would have to make plugging in possible, if only by offering the steps of the process for separate invocation.

(In case you wondered, "object member name" is the part before the : in a JSON object, the "value" is the part after it.)

edited Jun 9, 2011 at 20:28

answered Jun 9, 2011 at 19:14

T-Bull

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2 Comments

TM Stevens Over a year ago

Yeah, thanks. Some sort of variation like that is a possibility though I guess I was hoping that a library would be able to do it, though both of those look like they will replace @ even within content (though it's highly unlikely I'll have a "@ sequence in content)

T-Bull Over a year ago

@TM: Ok, now I understand your question better, I think. Updated answer.

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