Mapping Convention

The purpose of StAXON's mapping convention is to generate a more compact JSON. It borrows the "$" syntax for text elements from the Badgerfish convention but attempts to avoid needless text-only JSON objects. (However, StAXON's JsonXMLStreamReader can also handle Badgerfish-mapped documents out of the box.)

The rules are:

• Element names become object properties.

    <alice/>
  

  becomes

    { "alice": null }
  

• Attributes go in properties whose name begin with "@".

    <alice charlie="david"/>
  

  becomes

    { "alice": { "@charlie": "david" } }
  

• Text-only elements go to a simple key/value property.

    <alice>bob</alice>
  

  becomes

    { "alice": "bob" }
  

• Otherwise, text content is mapped to the "$" property.

    <alice charlie="david">bob</alice>
  

  becomes

    { "alice": { "@charlie": "david", "$": "bob" } }
  

• Nested elements go to nested properties.

    <alice><bob>charlie</bob></alice>
  

  becomes

    { "alice": { "bob": "charlie"} }
  

• A default namespace declaration goes in the element's "@xmlns" property.

    <alice xmlns="http://some-namespace"/>
  

  becomes

    { "alice": { "@xmlns": "http://some-namespace" } }
  

• A prefixed namespace declaration goes in the element's "@xmlns:<prefix>" property.

    <edgar:alice xmlns:edgar="http://some-other-namespace>bob</edgar:alice>
  

  becomes

    { "edgar:alice": { "@xmlns:edgar": "http://some-other-namespace", "$": "bob" } }
  

• Adjacent elements with the same name may become array elements.

    <alice><? xml-multiple bob ?><bob>charlie</bob><bob>david</bob></alice>
  

  becomes

    { "alice": { "bob": [ "charlie", "david" ] } }
  

  The <? xml-multiple bob ?> processing instruction serves as a hint to start an array of bob elements. Please refer to Mastering Arrays for more on this topic.