The CLI will now output a quoted string with escape characters instead of raw json like the previous version.

[angeld7]

• Are you running the latest version?
• Have you included sample input, output, error, and expected output?
• Have you checked if you are using correct configuration?
• Did you try online tool?
• Have you checked the docs for helpful APIs and examples?

Description

The CLI now outputs a string instead of valid JSON, like the previous versions did.

Examples:
version 4.5.1

echo '<xml><item>test</item></xml>' | fxparser 
{
    "xml": {
        "item": "test"
    }
}

version 4.5.2

echo '<xml><item>test</item></xml>' | fxparser 
"{\n    \"xml\": {\n        \"item\": \"test\"\n    }\n}"

Input

<xml><item>test</item></xml>

Code

echo '<xml><item>test</item></xml>' | fxparser 

Output

"{\n \"xml\": {\n \"item\": \"test\"\n }\n}"

expected data

{ "xml": { "item": "test" } }

Would you like to work on this issue?

• Yes
• No

I cannot commit much time but I have opened a PR that fixes it locally for me. I'm not familiar enough with the project to add unit tests that will ensure this doesn't become a future regression.

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[amitguptagwl]

I tested in my local environment and it is working fine.

{
  "xml": {
    "item": "test"
  }
}

I'm not sure if it is OS specific issue. Can you please recheck with v5 and confirm me back?

[angeld7]

@amitguptagwl I'm using this purely as a CLI tool for my Jenkins pipeline to read the pom.xml. I tried on both Linux via a Jenkins pipeline and MacOS. Here is the full script to recreate including the install scripts.

#!/bin/bash

# If you already have fxparser installed uninstall it
npm uninstall -g --silent fast-xml-parser

# Install via npm
npm install -g --silent fast-xml-parser

echo '<xml><item>test</item></xml>' | fxparser 2> /dev/null

When I save that into fxparser-issue.sh then run it, this is the output on any machine I have tried:

Output:

./fxparser-issue.sh 
"{\n    \"xml\": {\n        \"item\": \"test\"\n    }\n}"

If I update the install command to use the previous version like this npm install -g fast-xml-parser@4.5.1 then the script works as expected.

It looks like in the code JSON.stringify is being called on the object twice in some cases. This method in the original code seems to be the culprit

  const callback = function(xmlData) {
    let output = '';
    if (validate) {
      const parser = new XMLParser(options);
      output = parser.parse(xmlData,validate);
    } else if (validateOnly) {
      output = XMLValidator.validate(xmlData);
      process.exitCode = output === true ? 0 : 1;
    } else {
      const parser = new XMLParser(options);
      output = JSON.stringify(parser.parse(xmlData,validate), null, 4);
    }
    if (outputFileName) {
      writeToFile(outputFileName, output);
    } else {
      console.log(JSON.stringify(output, null, 2));
    }
  };

When validate == false and validateOnly == false and outputFileName == null, JSON.stringify is called twice.

[angeld7]

I updated my pr (#712) to fully address the issue. The issue only occurs when you call fxparser CLI with no flags.

[amitguptagwl]

let me check throughly. We can't avoid JSON parse.

[angeld7]

The update in the #712 will still call parse and stringify, it will just do it one time in all cases as expected.