Convert XML to JSON with JavaScript

It's important to point out that Titanium's Titanium.XML.DOMDocument object implements DOM2-level structures.  Here's the magic XML to JSON code:

// Changes XML to JSON
function xmlToJson(xml) {
 
 // Create the return object
 var obj = {};

 if (xml.nodeType == 1) { // element
  // do attributes
  if (xml.attributes.length > 0) {
  obj["@attributes"] = {};
   for (var j = 0; j < xml.attributes.length; j++) {
    var attribute = xml.attributes.item(j);
    obj["@attributes"][attribute.nodeName] = attribute.nodeValue;
   }
  }
 } else if (xml.nodeType == 3) { // text
  obj = xml.nodeValue;
 }

 // do children
 if (xml.hasChildNodes()) {
  for(var i = 0; i < xml.childNodes.length; i++) {
   var item = xml.childNodes.item(i);
   var nodeName = item.nodeName;
   if (typeof(obj[nodeName]) == "undefined") {
    obj[nodeName] = xmlToJson(item);
   } else {
    if (typeof(obj[nodeName].push) == "undefined") {
     var old = obj[nodeName];
     obj[nodeName] = [];
     obj[nodeName].push(old);
    }
    obj[nodeName].push(xmlToJson(item));
   }
  }
 }
 return obj;
};

The major change I needed to implement was using attributes.item(j) instead of the attributes[j] that most of the scripts I found used.  With this function, XML that looks like:

<ALEXA VER="0.9" URL="davidwalsh.name/" HOME="0" AID="=">
 <SD TITLE="A" FLAGS="" HOST="davidwalsh.name">
  <TITLE TEXT="David Walsh Blog :: PHP, MySQL, CSS, Javascript, MooTools, and Everything Else"/>
  <LINKSIN NUM="1102"/>
  <SPEED TEXT="1421" PCT="51"/>
 </SD>
 <SD>
  <POPULARITY URL="davidwalsh.name/" TEXT="7131"/>
  <REACH RANK="5952"/>
  <RANK DELTA="-1648"/>
 </SD>
</ALEXA>

...becomes workable a JavaScript object with the following structure:

{
 "@attributes": {
  AID: "=",
  HOME:  0,
  URL: "davidwalsh.name/",
  VER: "0.9",
 },
 SD = [
  {
   "@attributes": {
    FLAGS: "",
    HOST: "davidwalsh.name",
    TITLE: A
   },
   LINKSIN: {
    "@attributes": {
     NUM: 1102
    }
   },
   SPEED: {
    "@attributes": {
     PCT: 51,
     TEXT: 1421
    }
   },
   TITLE: {
    "@attributes": {
     TEXT: "David Walsh Blog :: PHP, MySQL, CSS, Javascript, MooTools, and Everything Else",
    }
   },
  },
  {
   POPULARITY: {
    "@attributes": {
     TEXT: 7131,
     URL: "davidwalsh.name/"
    }
   },
   RANK: {
    "@attributes": {
     DELTA: "-1648"
    }
   },
   REACH: {
    "@attributes": {
     RANK = 5952
    }
   }
  }
 ]
}

From here you can use the JavaScript object however you see fit. If you'd like the JavaScript in string JSON format, you can code:

// Assuming xmlDoc is the XML DOM Document
var jsonText = JSON.stringify(xmlToJson(xmlDoc));

This function has been extremely useful in allowing me to quickly disregard XML and use JSON instead.  The function works well when structuring attributes and arrays of nested child nodes.  Keep this handy;  at some point you may need to convert XML to JSON!