Convert MediaWiki to XML Online

Paste a MediaWiki table below, edit it if you need to, and get XML back. The conversion runs in your browser, so nothing is uploaded, there is no size limit and there is no signup.

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The output will appear here once there is a table to convert.

What MediaWiki is

MediaWiki table markup opens with {| and a class, marks headers with an exclamation mark and rows with |-.

Wikipedia editors and anyone running a MediaWiki install.

What XML is

XML marks up data with nested named tags and optional attributes. It is verbose, strict about being well-formed, and can carry a schema that says what shape a document must have.

Enterprise integrations, government data feeds, RSS, SOAP services and older document formats.

What changes when you convert MediaWiki to XML

Both cell styles are read: one cell per line, and several on a line separated by exclamation marks or double pipes, which is the form most Wikipedia tables use. Cell attributes before a single pipe are dropped, since style="text-align:right" is presentation rather than data. Wiki links come through as their display text, so [[France|the French Republic]] arrives as the French Republic, and reference markers are removed.

Each row becomes an element with one child per column. Header names are rewritten where they have to be, because an XML tag cannot start with a digit or contain a space, so a column called 2024 Sales becomes _2024_Sales.

What carries over from MediaWiki to XML

MediaWiki records 2 things about a table that XML has no way to hold.

XML has no header row. The column names are repeated as keys on every record instead, which is why the result is bigger on disk than the table it came from.

Anything visual in the MediaWiki - weight, alignment, colour, column widths - has no counterpart in XML and is dropped. The values are what survives.

The identifier 007 comes out of the XML as 007. Reading it as a number would have made it 7, and an id that changes value is worse than one that stays text.

The role "Analyst, data" survives with its comma, in one cell rather than split across two. That is the first thing to check in any converted table, and the usual place a XML file goes wrong.

The quotes around Jonah "Jo" Pryce are written as the HTML entity " in the XML.

A worked example

Three rows of staff data, with an identifier that has a leading zero, a value containing a comma, a value containing quotes and one blank cell. Those are the four places formats disagree, so they are the four places to look.

MediaWiki in
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! id !! name !! role !! started !! hours
|-
| 007 || Halima Yusuf || Analyst, data || 2024-03-15 || 38.5
|-
| 012 || Jonah "Jo" Pryce || Engineer || 2025-11-02 ||
|-
| 104 || Wei Chen || Manager || 2023-06-30 || 40
|}
XML out
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<staff>
  <row>
    <id>007</id>
    <name>Halima Yusuf</name>
    <role>Analyst, data</role>
    <started>2024-03-15</started>
    <hours>38.5</hours>
  </row>
  <row>
    <id>012</id>
    <name>Jonah &quot;Jo&quot; Pryce</name>
    <role>Engineer</role>
    <started>2025-11-02</started>
    <hours></hours>
  </row>
  <row>
    <id>104</id>
    <name>Wei Chen</name>
    <role>Manager</role>
    <started>2023-06-30</started>
    <hours>40</hours>
  </row>
</staff>

Questions

How do I convert MediaWiki to XML?

Paste your MediaWiki into the box above or drop the file onto it. Check the table in the grid, then copy or download the XML from the output panel. It takes one step and the data never leaves your browser.

Is there a limit on file size?

No. The work happens on your own machine, so the limit is your machine's memory rather than an upload cap. A file with tens of thousands of rows converts in a second or two.

Is my data uploaded anywhere?

No. The parsing and generating are done by JavaScript running on this page. You can watch the network tab while you convert and see that nothing is sent.

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