this is a great library, but the lack of support for attributes is a bummer.

one possible solution would be to generate an {attributes:{"name":"value",...}} 
child
item for any element that has attributes. this will keep the attributes from
colliding w/ existing elements and keep them in a 'known' place. 

please give it a shot as i really like this library.

A better solution in my opinion would be to use the @-character in the first 
value 
as a prefix. This is also the way that IBM generates it's JSON.
JSON doesn't support atttributes, only value pairs.
{root : ["@id": "2", "@agenzia":"Trieste", "@bank_id": "1"....]}

I think the @ solution is the best.
it's really simple to recognize and useful.

I think the @-solution is nice enough to implement it. 

Question 1: can an XML-element's name start with an @-sign? If yes, do we need 
to 
escape it?

Question 2: Is backward compatibility needed?

I tryed with a validator online with this code:

<?xml version="1.0" ?> 
<note>
<@test>works</@test>
</note>

at the address: http://www.w3schools.com/Dom/dom_validate.asp

It does NOT validate, so I think it's ok to use @ for attributes.

Note that also XML attributes that start with @ are not validate:

<?xml version="1.0" ?> 
<note>
<test @myattr="1">works</test>
</note>

This is NOT validate.

According to the XML specification, a tag starts with STag (and via Name to 
NameStartChar), which doesn't list a @-sign (
(http://www.w3.org/TR/2008/REC-xml-20081126/#sec-starttags). The XML Namespaces 
spec 
even brings (QName, LocalPart, NCName to NCNameStartChar) it down to a letter 
or an 
underscore
(http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/#ns-using).

And also my tool XMLStarlet (http://xmlstar.sourceforge.net/) thinks it is 
illegal.

Answer to question 1: we can assume a tagname doens't start with a @-sign, so 
we 
don't need to escape it.

Can you have xsl who works with attributes...

[deleted comment]

OK. Is someone willing to make this change? 

You can attach a svn patch (including testcases) to this issue.

Martynas Jusevičius has a version that works with attributes. See his blog at
http://www.xml.lt/Blog/2009/01/21/XML+to+JSON