XML to CSV converter

XML to CSV uses row detection plus flattening, so repeated elements become table rows and hierarchical XML becomes delimited columns.

Converted with Table engine · nothing stored
Free: 5 conversions a day · 5 MB each
Higher limits →

From real runs

What you get — and what changes

Element	Result	What happens
Row detection	Changed	Without rowPath, the parser chose the repeated product elements and warned that XML rows were detected with a heuristic.
Attributes	Changed	Attributes became columns prefixed with `@_`, including @_id and @_active in the CSV header.
Nested child elements	Changed	The price element with text and currency attribute flattened into price.#text and price.@_currency columns.
Repeated children	Changed	Two tag elements for Hoodie became a JSON string inside one CSV field rather than duplicate CSV rows.
Scalar values	Kept	Product names, numeric price text, currency codes, ids, and active flags were all present in the CSV rows.
Document wrapper	Lost	The catalog root and generated attribute were not emitted as row values because the detected rows were product elements.
XML ordering	Lost	Original element order, indentation, comments, and mixed-content boundaries are not recoverable from the flattened CSV.

Row detection Changed
Without rowPath, the parser chose the repeated product elements and warned that XML rows were detected with a heuristic.
Attributes Changed
Attributes became columns prefixed with @_, including @_id and @_active in the CSV header.
Nested child elements Changed
The price element with text and currency attribute flattened into price.#text and price.@_currency columns.
Repeated children Changed
Two tag elements for Hoodie became a JSON string inside one CSV field rather than duplicate CSV rows.
Scalar values Kept
Product names, numeric price text, currency codes, ids, and active flags were all present in the CSV rows.
Document wrapper Lost
The catalog root and generated attribute were not emitted as row values because the detected rows were product elements.
XML ordering Lost
Original element order, indentation, comments, and mixed-content boundaries are not recoverable from the flattened CSV.

Sample conversions

Catalog products

Input: 359-byte XML catalog with generated attribute, two product elements, nested price currency attributes, and repeated tag elements.
Output: 139-byte CSV header was name,price.#text,price.@_currency,tag,@_id,@_active and first row included Hoodie,49.95,USD,"[""outerwear"",""fall""]",p-100,true.

Single repeated tag

Input: Second product had one tag element with value ceramic and active=false.
Output: The CSV wrote Mug,12.5,USD,ceramic,p-200,false, so single repeated-field values are not wrapped as arrays.

A real XML → CSV run

We converted our XML sample (733 B) with Table engine on 2026-09-11. It took 1 ms and produced a 225 B CSV file, 69% smaller than the input. The engine raised 1 warning, listed below.

Input · sample.xml · 733 B

25 elements, root <rows>, XML declaration present

Elements: 25
Root element: rows
XML declaration: yes

Output · sample.csv · 225 B

4 data rows × 5 columns; header: company,stage,arr,owner,close_date

Rows: 4
Columns: 5
Header: company,stage,arr,owner,close_date

XML rows were detected with a heuristic; pass rowPath for deterministic parsing.

First lines of the output

csv

company,stage,arr,owner,close_date
Northwind Traders,Proposal,48000,R. Ayers,2026-10-14
Contoso Ltd,Negotiation,120000,P. Ng,2026-09-30
Fabrikam,Qualified,22500,R. Ayers,2026-11-02
Tailspin Toys,Won,64000,M. Okafor,2026-09-03

Options and when to change them

rowPath: Set the path to the repeated element, such as catalog.product, when automatic row detection might pick the wrong list.
flattenSeparator: Change the dot separator if downstream column names cannot contain periods.
arrayMode: Use JSON mode for variable repeated children, or explode mode when each repeated child should get an indexed column.
delimiter: Choose tab or semicolon output for importers that cannot accept comma-delimited CSV.

Do it yourself

Python ElementTree

bash

python - <<'PY'
import csv, xml.etree.ElementTree as ET
root = ET.parse("in.xml").getroot()
with open("out.csv", "w", newline="", encoding="utf-8") as fh:
    w = csv.writer(fh)
    w.writerow(["id", "active", "name", "price"])
    for p in root.findall("product"):
        w.writerow([p.get("id"), p.get("active"), p.findtext("name"), p.findtext("price")])
PY

This is deterministic because the row path is coded by hand; change it for your XML shape.

XML to CSV by API or MCP

The HTTP API and the MCP server run the exact engine this page uses (Table engine); the response carries the same warnings the web converter shows. Check support first with GET /api/v1/pairs?from=xml&to=csv.

curl

curl -X POST https://filetypeconverters.com/api/v1/convert \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $FTC_API_KEY" \
  -F "file=@input.xml" -F "from=xml" -F "to=csv" \
  -F 'options={"encoding":"utf-8"}' \
  --output output.csv

Options this engine accepts for XML → CSV

Key	Applies to	Type	Default
encoding	Reading XML	utf-8 · latin1	utf-8
flattenSeparator	Reading XML	string	.
arrayMode	Reading XML	json · explode	json
rowPath	Reading XML	string
delimiter	Writing CSV	string	,
newline	Writing CSV	·

API reference

When this is the wrong conversion

Use /convert/xml-to-json when attributes, nesting, and repeated elements matter more than spreadsheet columns.
Do not use CSV if mixed-content XML order or comments carry meaning; keep XML and parse it with an XML-aware tool.

XML to CSV questions

How does XML to CSV choose rows?

If rowPath is not supplied, the parser looks for the largest repeated array of object-like elements. In our catalog test it picked product elements and warned that the choice was heuristic.

Where do XML attributes go in CSV?

Attributes become regular columns with an @_ prefix. The product id and active attributes became @_id and @_active columns.

What happens to repeated child tags?

Variable repeated children are flattened into a cell value. In JSON array mode, two tag nodes became a quoted JSON array inside the CSV field.