body-parser-xml-json

XML Body Parser using xml-js library

Adds XML parsing to the body-parser library, so you can convert incoming XML data into a JSON representation.

This is really useful if you want to deal with plain old JavaScript objects, but you need to interface with XML APIs.

This is based on body-parser-xml package.

Installation

npm install --save express body-parser body-parser-xml-json

Usage

This library adds an xml method to the body-parser object.

Initialise like so:

var bodyParser = require('body-parser');
require('body-parser-xml-json')(bodyParser);

Once initialised, you can use it just like any other body-parser middleware:

var app = require('express')();
app.use(bodyParser.xml());

This will parse any XML-based request and place it as a JavaScript object on req.body for your route handlers to use.

An XML-based request is determined by the value of the Content-Type header. By default, any Content-Type header ending in /xml or +xml will be parsed as XML. For example, the following Content-Types will all match:

• text/xml
• application/xml
• application/rss+xml

If you need to match against a custom Content-Type header, pass in the type to match as an option (see below).

Options

You can also pass in options:

app.use(bodyParser.xml(options));

xmlParseOptions

This option controls the behaviour of the XML parser. You can pass any option that is supported by the xml-js library: [see here]

Example

var express = require('express'),
    bodyParser = require('body-parser');
 
require('body-parser-xml-json')(bodyParser);
 
var app = express();
app.use(bodyParser.xml({
  xmlParseOptions: {
    compact: true 
  }
}));
 
app.post('/users', function(req, res, body) {
  // Any request with an XML payload will be parsed
  // and a JavaScript object produced on req.body
  // corresponding to the request payload.
  console.log(req.body);
  res.status(200).end();
});
 

Motivation

This library was born out of a frustration that express-xml-bodyparser, the most popular XML-parsing library for express, doesn't support the regular body-parser options - in particular, limiting the payload size.

This library was written to use body-parser's text parser under the hood, and then passes the parsed string into the XML parser. We can therefore take advantage of body-parser's regular options, and support limiting the payload size, amongst other things.

License

MIT