Forms2xml Apr 2026

Posted by DevTooling Team Reading time: 3 minutes

name=John+Doe&age=30&country=US&interests=code&interests=hiking

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <user_data> <name>John Doe</name> <age>30</age> <country>US</country> <interests> <item>code</item> <item>hiking</item> </interests> </user_data> Notice how repeated interests keys automatically become an array-style XML list. That’s the kind of smart default behavior forms2xml provides. A robust forms2xml implementation usually includes:

Real‑world implementations would add XML entity escaping, CDATA support, and configurable plural rules. forms2xml won’t win a beauty contest, but it solves a real, boring, valuable problem: making old and new systems talk without rewriting everything.

next();

function toXML(obj, rootName) // naive recursive conversion – real libs use proper escaping & attributes let xml = <$rootName> ; for (let [key, val] of Object.entries(obj)) if (Array.isArray(val)) val.forEach(v => xml += <$key>$escape(v)</$key> ); else if (typeof val === 'object') xml += toXML(val, key); else xml += <$key>$escape(val)</$key> ;

xml += </$rootName> ; return xml;

Do you have a legacy XML endpoint that refuses to die? Try adding a forms2xml adapter layer. You might just save yourself a month of SOAP‑related headaches. Have you built your own forms2xml tool? Share your approach in the comments below.