Transform 0.5GB of XML file to Json

I had a client that worked with a supplier with access to an online portal. The problem was that the supplier could only offer an old XML file of products and nothing else. The XML file was huge—more than 0.5 GB of data containing product information.

My client came to me and asked for help because he wanted to convert this XML to JSON to use it in his Shopify e-commerce store.

So, I solved it using streaming in terms of software development. Instead of trying to load the entire file into memory, which would have been inefficient and prone to crashing, I used a streaming parser to read the XML file in chunks.

By processing the data incrementally, I could convert it to JSON as it was read, ensuring that memory usage remained low and performance was optimized. This approach allowed us to handle the large file without bottlenecks.

After converting the XML to JSON, I wrote scripts to clean and transform the data to fit Shopify’s product format, handling issues like categories, variants, and images along the way. The final JSON data was then imported into Shopify via their API, and my client was able to seamlessly integrate the products into their online store.

This solution saved a lot of time and avoided manual data entry, ensuring accuracy and scalability for future updates.