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Converting Json to XML Generated invalid XML

Yohan Weerasinghe

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posted 11 years ago

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Hello all,

First, please note I made this question http://stackoverflow.com/questions/21827492/converting-json-to-xml-generated-invalid-xml";" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here as well, but no satisfying answer so I came here.

I am trying to convert a JSON file into XML. My Json file is a Big Json Array. Below code shows how I am trying to make this happen.

import java.io.BufferedReader;
    import java.io.File;
    import java.io.FileWriter;
    import java.io.IOException;
    import java.io.InputStreamReader;
    
    import org.json.JSONArray;
    import org.json.JSONException;
    import org.json.JSONML;
    import org.json.JSONTokener;
    import org.json.XML;
    
    import com.amazonaws.auth.ClasspathPropertiesFileCredentialsProvider;
    import com.amazonaws.regions.Region;
    import com.amazonaws.regions.Regions;
    import com.amazonaws.services.s3.AmazonS3Client;
    import com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.GetObjectRequest;
    import com.amazonaws.services.s3.model.S3Object;
    
    public class JsonToXML
    {
    	private AmazonS3Client s3;
    	
    
    	public JsonToXML(String inputBucket, String inputFile) throws IOException, JSONException
    	{
    		   
            //Connection to S3
    		s3 = new AmazonS3Client(new ClasspathPropertiesFileCredentialsProvider());
    		Region usWest2 = Region.getRegion(Regions.US_EAST_1);
    		s3.setRegion(usWest2);
    			
    		//Downloading the Object
    		System.out.println("Downloading Object");
    		S3Object s3Object = s3.getObject(new GetObjectRequest(inputBucket, inputFile));
    		System.out.println("Content-Type: "  + s3Object.getObjectMetadata().getContentType());
    		
    		
    		//Read the JSON File
    		BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(s3Object.getObjectContent()));
    		StringBuffer strBuffer = new StringBuffer("");
    		int i=0;
            while (true) {
                String line = reader.readLine();
                if (line == null) break;
    
                System.out.println("Running: "+i);
                strBuffer.append(line);
                i++;
            }
            
            JSONTokener jTokener = new JSONTokener(strBuffer.toString());
            JSONArray jsonArray = new JSONArray(jTokener);
            
            //Convert to XML
            String xml = XML.toString(jsonArray);
            
            File f = new File("XML.xml");
            FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(f);
            fw.write(xml);
            fw.flush()
            fw.close();
            
    	}
    }

This is how the Json files look like

This code generated invalid XML. When tested in XML Validators, they show the errors. What is wrong here? Please help.

**UPDATE**

I managed to generate the following output

But XML Validator in here says:

I have been struggling with this for days , still no good and no one is able to help too. Any idea please?

Are you better than me? Then please show me my mistakes..

Roger Sterling

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posted 11 years ago

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Not that this is illegal, but I prefer not to have whitespace in your tag : < type> </ type>.

You might also import your XML into XML Notepad (free download from Microsoft) which could help you figure out what changes you need to make to your code to get the right output.

Yohan Weerasinghe

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posted 11 years ago

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Roger Sterling wrote:Not that this is illegal, but I prefer not to have whitespace in your tag : < type> </ type>.

You might also import your XML into XML Notepad (free download from Microsoft) which could help you figure out what changes you need to make to your code to get the right output.

Thanks for the reply. I have used built in ways of doing the job. Do you know any other proven way of making this happen?

Are you better than me? Then please show me my mistakes..

Roger Sterling

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posted 11 years ago

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You can normalize the tags to exclude or replace whitespace with an underscore.

Yohan Weerasinghe

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posted 11 years ago

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Roger Sterling wrote:You can normalize the tags to exclude or replace whitespace with an underscore.

The problem here is there are too many root level elements in the XML. Not whitespaces.

Are you better than me? Then please show me my mistakes..

Roger Sterling

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posted 11 years ago

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Yohan Weerasinghe wrote:

Roger Sterling wrote:You can normalize the tags to exclude or replace whitespace with an underscore.

The problem here is there are too many root level elements in the XML. Not whitespaces.

Then add a parent root XML. You can have many children in the parent.

Ulf Dittmer

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posted 11 years ago

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Yohan Weerasinghe wrote:The problem here is there are too many root level elements in the XML.

I would phrase it slightly differently: There aren't too many root elements, there is no root element. JSON has no concept of a root element, so the XML class can't provide one. As the javadocs of the XML.toString method says, it creates an XML string, not an XML document. You have to provide the rest.

Yohan Weerasinghe

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posted 11 years ago

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Ulf Dittmer wrote:

Yohan Weerasinghe wrote:The problem here is there are too many root level elements in the XML.

I would phrase it slightly differently: There aren't too many root elements, there is no root element. JSON has no concept of a root element, so the XML class can't provide one. As the javadocs of the XML.toString method says, it creates an XML string, not an XML document. You have to provide the rest.

:O :O :O How can I do that? There is also another issue. I have only one root element in Json, that is an array But this XML conversation has generated multiple arrays!!

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Ulf Dittmer

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posted 11 years ago

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Yohan Weerasinghe wrote:How can I do that?

Do you know XML? If you look at what gets created, what is still missing? If you are unsure, then I think you should read up on what well-formatted XML is.

I have only one root element in Json, that is an array But this XML conversation has generated multiple arrays!!

As I said before, there is no concept of a root element in JSON. JSON is different than XML - there is no one-to-one mapping between the two. (And no, there are not multiple arrays - there is a list of elements, each one of which is surrounded by a tag named "array".) I've never used this class before, but it seems to be the most basic of JSON-to-XML converters. If you want more, you'll have to find a more capable converter, or write one yourself.