I’m working on creating a custom Zapier integration and running into issues with processing XML responses. When I make API calls using fetch, the response comes back in XML format but I can’t figure out how to properly convert it to a usable format in my Node.js code.
I’ve tried a few different approaches but nothing seems to work correctly. The XML structure is fairly complex with nested elements and I need to extract specific values from it.
Has anyone dealt with similar XML parsing challenges in Zapier apps? What’s the best way to handle this kind of data transformation? Any recommended libraries or techniques that work well in the Zapier environment would be really helpful.
I had better luck with fast-xml-parser over xml2js for Zapier stuff. It handles messy nested XML better and gives you more control over the output. The key thing is setting up attribute handling properly - tons of XML APIs shove the important data into attributes instead of element values. Test your parsing with different XML variations because APIs love returning slightly different structures depending on what data they’re sending back. Found this out the hard way when my integration died in production because an optional element was missing in some responses. Pro tip: check if the API actually supports JSON responses. Just set the right Accept header and you might skip all the XML parsing pain entirely - lots of older APIs support it even if they don’t advertise it.
XML parsing in Zapier is a nightmare. I’ve built countless integrations and custom parsers are impossible to maintain.
Skip the libraries and memory headaches - I push all XML processing to Latenode. Set up a workflow that takes your XML, processes it with their built-in parsers, and shoots clean JSON back to Zapier.
Latenode does the heavy work. No more broken nested elements or memory caps with huge responses. Send raw XML to your endpoint, get perfect data back.
I use this for APIs with messy XML structures. Their visual builder handles different formats and validation easily. Way better than fighting Zapier’s limits.
Check it out: https://latenode.com
I’ve been through this exact situation building a Zapier app that pulled XML from an old ERP system. You need solid error handling with your parsing - XML structures are all over the place. After using xml2js, always validate the object structure before you try grabbing values. The nested elements change depth based on what data comes back, so I used optional chaining with fallback values to avoid runtime crashes. One thing to watch - Zapier’s got memory limits. For big XML responses, I switched to streaming instead of loading everything at once. Made it way more reliable in production.
jsdom’s solid for xpath too, especially with messy XML where you need precise element selection. Just load the XML and query it like normal DOM - way easier than wrestling with parsers when you know exactly which nodes you’re after.
for sure, xml2js is the way to go! i ran into similar issues but this library made it easy. just do xml2js.parseString() to get your xml into json format. it really takes care of those tricky parts.