Pulling data from API as XML and converting to JSON

Question

This is my first javascript project where I am trying to pull data from different APIs in order to make a small dashboard. I'm pulling data from an API in XML format and would like to convert it directly to JSON and store it in a variable.

const testdataurl = 'https://api.data.abs.gov.au/data/ABS,RES_DWELL/3.3GBRI.Q';
    
async function getData() {
    const response = await fetch(testdataurl);
    data = await response.text();
    console.log(data);
    }

getData()

You can see the API endpoint in the code above if you want to have a look at the XML. What's the easiest way for me to convert that as soon as it's pulled to JSON and store in a variable?

I have looked into using this:

https://goessner.net/download/prj/jsonxml/

but I'm not sure how to best implement it.

Thanks

Answer 1

There are other resources that better explain how to import script into your html to make it available in your project. The script referenced was small enough for me to just copy / paste the snippet into a single post. For some reason the json string the code snippet was supposed to provide had an undefined segment returned. I am not sure why this is the case, but after examining the xml and the string returned, it does not look like it was important so I just remove it from the json string before parsing into an object.

keep in mind this code will not work on stackoverflow because of CORS. I tested it on the api.data.abs.gov.au website to avoid CORS issues.

Hopefully this helps.

 function parseXml(xml) { var dom = null; if (window.DOMParser) { try { dom = (new DOMParser()).parseFromString(xml, "text/xml"); } catch (e) { dom = null; } } else if (window.ActiveXObject) { try { dom = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLDOM'); dom.async = false; if (!dom.loadXML(xml)) // parse error .. window.alert(dom.parseError.reason + dom.parseError.srcText); } catch (e) { dom = null; } } else alert("cannot parse xml string!"); return dom; } /* This work is licensed under Creative Commons GNU LGPL License. License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/LGPL/2.1/ Version: 0.9 Author: Stefan Goessner/2006 Web: http://goessner.net/ */ function xml2json(xml, tab) { var X = { toObj: function(xml) { var o = {}; if (xml.nodeType==1) { // element node .. if (xml.attributes.length) // element with attributes .. for (var i=0; i<xml.attributes.length; i++) o["@"+xml.attributes[i].nodeName] = (xml.attributes[i].nodeValue||"").toString(); if (xml.firstChild) { // element has child nodes .. var textChild=0, cdataChild=0, hasElementChild=false; for (var n=xml.firstChild; n; n=n.nextSibling) { if (n.nodeType==1) hasElementChild = true; else if (n.nodeType==3 && n.nodeValue.match(/[^ \\f\\n\\r\\t\\v]/)) textChild++; // non-whitespace text else if (n.nodeType==4) cdataChild++; // cdata section node } if (hasElementChild) { if (textChild < 2 && cdataChild < 2) { // structured element with evtl. a single text or/and cdata node .. X.removeWhite(xml); for (var n=xml.firstChild; n; n=n.nextSibling) { if (n.nodeType == 3) // text node o["#text"] = X.escape(n.nodeValue); else if (n.nodeType == 4) // cdata node o["#cdata"] = X.escape(n.nodeValue); else if (o[n.nodeName]) { // multiple occurence of element .. if (o[n.nodeName] instanceof Array) o[n.nodeName][o[n.nodeName].length] = X.toObj(n); else o[n.nodeName] = [o[n.nodeName], X.toObj(n)]; } else // first occurence of element.. o[n.nodeName] = X.toObj(n); } } else { // mixed content if (!xml.attributes.length) o = X.escape(X.innerXml(xml)); else o["#text"] = X.escape(X.innerXml(xml)); } } else if (textChild) { // pure text if (!xml.attributes.length) o = X.escape(X.innerXml(xml)); else o["#text"] = X.escape(X.innerXml(xml)); } else if (cdataChild) { // cdata if (cdataChild > 1) o = X.escape(X.innerXml(xml)); else for (var n=xml.firstChild; n; n=n.nextSibling) o["#cdata"] = X.escape(n.nodeValue); } } if (!xml.attributes.length && !xml.firstChild) o = null; } else if (xml.nodeType==9) { // document.node o = X.toObj(xml.documentElement); } else alert("unhandled node type: " + xml.nodeType); return o; }, toJson: function(o, name, ind) { var json = name ? ("\\""+name+"\\"") : ""; if (o instanceof Array) { for (var i=0,n=o.length; i<n; i++) o[i] = X.toJson(o[i], "", ind+"\\t"); json += (name?":[":"[") + (o.length > 1 ? ("\\n"+ind+"\\t"+o.join(",\\n"+ind+"\\t")+"\\n"+ind) : o.join("")) + "]"; } else if (o == null) json += (name&&":") + "null"; else if (typeof(o) == "object") { var arr = []; for (var m in o) arr[arr.length] = X.toJson(o[m], m, ind+"\\t"); json += (name?":{":"{") + (arr.length > 1 ? ("\\n"+ind+"\\t"+arr.join(",\\n"+ind+"\\t")+"\\n"+ind) : arr.join("")) + "}"; } else if (typeof(o) == "string") json += (name&&":") + "\\"" + o.toString() + "\\""; else json += (name&&":") + o.toString(); return json; }, innerXml: function(node) { var s = "" if ("innerHTML" in node) s = node.innerHTML; else { var asXml = function(n) { var s = ""; if (n.nodeType == 1) { s += "<" + n.nodeName; for (var i=0; i<n.attributes.length;i++) s += " " + n.attributes[i].nodeName + "=\\"" + (n.attributes[i].nodeValue||"").toString() + "\\""; if (n.firstChild) { s += ">"; for (var c=n.firstChild; c; c=c.nextSibling) s += asXml(c); s += "</"+n.nodeName+">"; } else s += "/>"; } else if (n.nodeType == 3) s += n.nodeValue; else if (n.nodeType == 4) s += "<![CDATA[" + n.nodeValue + "]]>"; return s; }; for (var c=node.firstChild; c; c=c.nextSibling) s += asXml(c); } return s; }, escape: function(txt) { return txt.replace(/[\\\\]/g, "\\\\\\\\") .replace(/[\\"]/g, '\\\\"') .replace(/[\\n]/g, '\\\\n') .replace(/[\\r]/g, '\\\\r'); }, removeWhite: function(e) { e.normalize(); for (var n = e.firstChild; n; ) { if (n.nodeType == 3) { // text node if (!n.nodeValue.match(/[^ \\f\\n\\r\\t\\v]/)) { // pure whitespace text node var nxt = n.nextSibling; e.removeChild(n); n = nxt; } else n = n.nextSibling; } else if (n.nodeType == 1) { // element node X.removeWhite(n); n = n.nextSibling; } else // any other node n = n.nextSibling; } return e; } }; if (xml.nodeType == 9) // document node xml = xml.documentElement; var json = X.toJson(X.toObj(X.removeWhite(xml)), xml.nodeName, "\\t"); return "{\\n" + tab + (tab ? json.replace(/\\t/g, tab) : json.replace(/\\t|\\n/g, "")) + "\\n}"; } const testdataurl = 'https://api.data.abs.gov.au/data/ABS,RES_DWELL/3.3GBRI.Q'; async function getData() { const response = await fetch(testdataurl); data = await response.text(); const dom = parseXml(data); const myJsonStr = xml2json(dom); const fixedJsonStr = myJsonStr.replace(/\\nundefined/, ""); const jsonObj = JSON.parse(fixedJsonStr); console.log(jsonObj); } getData();