XML

Available in AxoSyslog 4.9 and later.

The parse_xml() FilterX function parses raw XMLs into dictionaries. This is a new implementation, so the limitations and options of the legacy xml-parser() do not apply.

There is no standardized way of converting XML into a dict. AxoSyslog creates the most compact dict possible. This means certain nodes will have different types and structures depending on the input XML element. Note the following points:

1. Empty XML elements become empty strings.

   XML:  <foo></foo>
   JSON: {"foo": ""}
   

2. Attributions are stored in @attr key-value pairs, similarly to other converters (like python xmltodict).

   XML:  <foo bar="123" baz="bad"/>
   JSON: {"foo": {"@bar": "123", "@baz": "bad"}}
   

3. If an XML element has both attributes and a value, we need to store them in a dict, and the value needs a key. We store the text value under the #text key.

   XML:  <foo bar="123">baz</foo>
   JSON: {"foo": {"@bar": "123", "#text": "baz"}}
   

4. An XML element can have both a value and inner elements. We use the #text key here, too.

   XML:  <foo>bar<baz>123</baz></foo>
   JSON: {"foo": {"#text": "bar", "baz": "123"}}
   

5. An XML element can have multiple values separated by inner elements. In that case we concatenate the values.

   XML:  <foo>bar<a></a>baz</foo>
   JSON: {"foo": {"#text": "barbaz", "a": ""}}
   

Usage

my_structured_data = parse_xml(raw_xml);