I’m working on creating a custom Zapier integration and running into issues with XML processing. When I make HTTP requests to an external API, I get back XML data instead of JSON. I’ve tried a few different approaches but can’t seem to get the XML parsed correctly in my Node.js code.
The XML response looks pretty standard but I’m not sure which parsing library works best with Zapier’s environment. I’ve seen mentions of xml2js and other packages but I’m not sure if they’re compatible or if there’s a better way to handle this.
Has anyone successfully processed XML responses in their Zapier apps? What’s the recommended approach for converting XML to a format that Zapier can work with? Any code examples would be really helpful.
hey, xml2js is def the way to go! super easy to use, just install it via npm. make sure to tweak the options to fit your XML, but it’s solid for parsing! gl with your zap integration!
Had this exact problem when building a Zapier integration for an old API that only spits out XML. The trick is preprocessing the XML before Zapier gets its hands on it. I used node-xml2js with custom settings for attributes and arrays, but here’s what really mattered - I built a transformation layer that flattens all the nested XML into simple key-value pairs that Zapier can actually work with. Don’t forget to handle CDATA sections if your XML has them, and add schema validation to catch broken responses early. Test like crazy with different XML formats from your API - production data always has weird edge cases that’ll break your parser.
I’ve hit similar XML parsing issues with Zapier before. Skip xml2js and go with fast-xml-parser instead - it’s lighter and faster in Zapier’s environment. Parse the XML in your auth or trigger functions, then convert it to clean JSON before sending to Zapier’s output. Don’t forget error handling since XML responses love to change structure on you. Also, validate your parsed data matches what Zapier expects, especially dates and nested objects. Keep the conversion consistent because users depend on those field names staying the same across workflows.