// from: https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/99lnxd/help_needed_encodingxml_parsing_malformed_xml/ // package main import ( "encoding/xml" "fmt" "github.com/clbanning/mxj" ) func main() { type decodedXml struct { XMLName xml.Name `xml:"tag" binding:"required"` SomeAttr string `xml:"someattr,attr"` } data := []byte(` -==sddsfdqsdqsdsqd A BUNCH OF INVALID DATA IN THE XML FILE HAHAH --SEPARATERUFCIFHEIR Content-Type: text/plain --SEPARATERUFCIFHEIR-- {"hello": "world"} `) // don't prepend attributes with '-' mxj.SetAttrPrefix("") // parse the data as a map[string]interface{} value m, err := mxj.NewMapXml(data) if err != nil { fmt.Println("err:", err) return } // check that we got a 'tag' tagged doc if _, ok := m["tag"]; !ok { fmt.Println("no tag doc ...") return } fmt.Printf("%v\n", m) // extract the attribute value attrval, err := m.ValueForPath("tag.someattr") if err != nil { fmt.Println("err:", err) return } // create decodeXml value val := decodedXml{ XMLName: xml.Name{"", "tag"}, SomeAttr: attrval.(string)} fmt.Printf("%v\n", val) }