About XML Parser

Parse XML and extract structured data. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the XML collection.

Use Cases

• Backend devs extracting data from third-party XML API responses
• Data engineers transforming XML exports into structured datasets
• Automation engineers parsing XML reports from testing frameworks
• Mobile developers consuming XML-based RSS or Atom feeds

Tips

• Check parsed output for correct attribute-to-property mapping
• Verify that repeated elements become arrays in the parsed result
• Use the parsed tree to plan XPath or CSS selector queries

Fun Facts

• SAX (Simple API for XML), the first event-driven XML parser, was developed by David Megginson in 1998 on the xml-dev mailing list.
• DOM parsing loads the entire XML document into memory, while SAX parsing uses constant memory regardless of document size.
• The Expat XML parser library, written in C by James Clark in 1998, remains one of the fastest XML parsers available today.

FAQ

What does this parse into?

A JavaScript-style object tree you can copy as JSON. Elements become keys, attributes are prefixed with `@`, and text content goes into `#text`.

Can I run XPath or XQuery?

XPath yes (common subset). XQuery no. Paste your expression and see matching nodes returned as a list.

How are repeating elements handled?

When an element occurs more than once under the same parent, it becomes an array in the output. Single occurrences stay as scalar values.

What happens with mixed content?

Elements that contain both text and child tags keep the text in `#text` and children in their own keys. This is ambiguous in general — double-check the output against your XPath expectations.