Tablizer

Convert MySQL Output to XML Online

Paste a MySQL Output 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.

From

The only part of this site that uses a server. The address is sent to it so the page can be fetched, because a browser is not allowed to fetch someone else's page itself. Your own files are never involved.

Nothing here is uploaded. The parsing happens on this page.
Edit
Paste or upload something above and it will appear here.
ToDataMarkupDocumentsCodeSchemasImages

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

What MySQL Output is

Not a file format at all. It is what the MySQL command line prints when you run a query: a box drawn with plus signs, dashes and pipes, with a line underneath saying how many rows were in the set.

Anyone who has run a query in a terminal and wants the answer in a spreadsheet.

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 MySQL Output to XML

The rules and the trailing row count are dropped and the pipes become column boundaries. MySQL prints an unset value as the four characters NULL, which arrives here as an empty cell, because that is what NULL means and because a literal string of NULL in a spreadsheet is worse than a blank. Paste it as CSV instead and every row becomes one column full of pipes, which is why this is its own format.

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 MySQL Output to XML

MySQL records 3 things about a table that XML has no way to hold.

MySQL distinguishes a number from the text of a number; XML does not, so every value arrives as text and has to be re-parsed by whatever reads it next.

An empty cell and a missing one are the same thing in XML, so a null and an empty string in the MySQL both come out blank and can no longer be told apart.

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.

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.

MySQL Output in
+-----+------------------+---------------+------------+-------+
| id  | name             | role          | started    | hours |
+-----+------------------+---------------+------------+-------+
| 007 | Halima Yusuf     | Analyst, data | 2024-03-15 | 38.5  |
| 012 | Jonah "Jo" Pryce | Engineer      | 2025-11-02 | NULL  |
| 104 | Wei Chen         | Manager       | 2023-06-30 | 40    |
+-----+------------------+---------------+------------+-------+
3 rows in set (0.00 sec)
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 MySQL Output to XML?

Paste your MySQL Output 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.

Can I paste output from psql or sqlite3 as well?

psql draws its box with different characters and is not read here. Both psql and the MySQL client can print tab-separated output instead, which is detected as TSV and is the more reliable route for either: mysql -B, or \pset format unaligned and \pset fieldsep in psql.

Will my numbers still be numbers?

They will read the same, but XML stores them as text. Anything that sorts or sums the result will need to parse them first, and a leading zero or a currency symbol is the usual place that goes wrong.

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.

Related conversions