Use the free XML to YAML Converter below: your data never leaves your browser — all work happens on your device, and nothing is uploaded to any server.
Why Convert XML to YAML
XML and YAML come from different eras of computing, and they still meet in real work. Older systems export data as XML: feeds, configs, SOAP responses, and office files. Newer tooling prefers YAML for its readability: short, indented, and free of closing tags. When you need to move data from the old world to the new one, or simply read an XML export without wading through angle brackets, converting to YAML is the fastest route.
This converter parses XML with fast-xml-parser and writes YAML with js-yaml, entirely in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, and the conversion keeps the structure of your document: elements become keys, repeated elements become lists, and attributes are kept with a clear marker.
How to Use the Converter
Paste XML into the input box and press Convert to YAML. The tool validates the XML first, so a broken document produces a clear error instead of a misleading partial result. The YAML output appears below, ready to copy or download. If the XML has one root element, the YAML has one top-level key with that name. That is normal: XML requires a single root, and YAML mirrors it.
Try the sample to learn the mapping. It shows a small catalog with two books. Each book becomes an entry in a list, because repeated elements map to YAML lists. The id attribute appears as a key starting with @_ , which is fast-xml-parser’s way of marking attributes so they cannot be confused with child elements. The title, author, and price become ordinary keys inside each book.
How Elements, Attributes, and Text Map
An element with children becomes a mapping: its child elements become keys. An element that appears several times under the same parent becomes a list of mappings, which is why the sample catalog has a list of books. An element with only text becomes a key with a plain value, and numbers are detected, so a price of 9.99 becomes the number 9.99 rather than the string “9.99”.
Attributes need care, because YAML has no attribute concept. The converter prefixes them with @_, so id=”1″ becomes @_id: 1. When you use the YAML output, remember that those keys came from attributes, not from child elements. If you later convert the YAML back to XML with a matching tool, the @_ prefix is what lets the tool restore the attributes. Mixed content, where text and child elements sit side by side inside one element, is the hardest case: the converter keeps the text under a special key, but the result is harder to read, and mixed content usually means the XML was designed for documents rather than data.
When Conversion Loses Something
Conversion is faithful for data-shaped XML, but a few things do not survive. Comments are dropped, because YAML comments work differently and the parser does not carry them over. Processing instructions and the XML declaration are dropped too, since they describe the file rather than the data. Namespace prefixes on element names are kept as part of the key names, which is correct but can look noisy; if your XML uses namespaces heavily, expect keys like ns:title. CDATA sections become plain text, which is usually what you want, since CDATA is just a way of writing text that contains special characters.
If your document is a long article with paragraphs, emphasis, and footnotes, converting to YAML will not make it more readable. YAML suits structured data: records, settings, and lists. Documents suit XML or Markdown. Use the right tool for the shape of your data.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does @_ mean in the output? It marks a key that came from an XML attribute, so attributes stay separate from child elements.
Why is my price a number, not text? The parser detects numeric values. If you need it as text, quote it in the receiving system, or keep the XML original.
Is my XML uploaded anywhere? No. Parsing and writing both happen in your browser on your own device.
Paste your XML above and read it as clean YAML in seconds.
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