XML Essentials [Episode One]

XML Essentials [Episode One]

Download the PDF > XML essentials
- eXtensible Markup Language
- Tag based syntax, very much like HTML but not a replacement for it
- Recommendation of W3C 1998
- Base for several web technologies such as XHTML, AJAX, RSS/ATOM, Web services
- Used for structure and describe data
- Enables communicate between different systems and services
- Hosts different related technologies such as XPath, XSLT, XQuey, XPointer/ XLink
Advantages
- Separates presentation layer
- XML files can be read by many applications such as Java, .Net, PHP, JavaScript and etc.
- Can be used with Server side and Client side
Disadvantages
- Not suitable for large data files (like 1GB of data)
- Not suitable for image like data
- JSON may be better solution for some cases other than XML
Basics of XML
- Elements Naming
Can only start with hyphen (_) or with letter
Rules of XML Syntax
- Must have single root tag
- Must well formed
- Must have end tags
- Attributes must inside quotes
XML Namespaces
- Prevents from different language tags conflicting with XML tags we defining
- CDATA Section
  - Will not processed by XML parser
  - Used in cases like when we using some scripting codes inside
- Processing Instructions
  - Special instructions to XML parser
  - Syntax - <?targetName instructions ?>
Start Working on XML

If you started with below and open with browser, It’ll ask for style information as below;

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>

<FirstTag>

This is my First XML file



</FirstTag>
Then what you should do is adding style sheet to itas below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="no"?>



<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="FirstXmlCss.css"?>



<FirstTag>

This is my First XML file



</FirstTag>

Style sheet should be as follows

/*this is CSS file for XML*/

FirstTag {

display:block;

font-family:Arial;

font-style:italic;

color:green;

}

Document Object Model (DOM)
- Platform, browser and language neutral
- Represent content as tree structure
- Uses to disaplay and manipulate XML data
Eg:

<html>

<head>

<title>This is title</title>

</head>

<body>

<p>DOM explained</p>

</body>

</html>

Properties of DOM

For represent relationships

For accessing and creating elements

For accessing and removing properties
References
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Office_XML_formats

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