Basic XML Concepts

Web Programming
Maymester 2004
 XML fundamental concepts
• XML is not a language, but a structure for
defining application-specific mini-
languages
• Tags, elements and attributes
• Tag names can be ANYTHING (depends
on application
Example XML document
 XML/HTML entities
• Some symbols cannot appear in
document content because they confuse
parsing
• Entities represent these symbols
&lt; <
&gt; >
&amp; &
&quot; “ (double quote)
 Well-Formed XML document
• Every tag has a matching closing tag
• Tags are properly nested
• You can have an empty element, which is
its own matching close tag
• <danger voltage=“480” />
• All attribute values appear in quotes
 Valid XML document
• A valid document must be well-formed
• In addition, the document conforms to a
language definition
• The language definition specifies possible
tags, their contents, and their attributes
• Two types of language definitions:
– Document Type Definition (DTD)
– XML Schema
 Document Type Definition
• Example: a letter contains a source and
destination address, a salutation, one or
more paragraphs, and a closing
 DTD Attribute Definitions
• REQUIRED: must always appear
• IMPLIED: optional
• FIXED: required, and always has same
value
 DTD Data Types & Quantifiers
• #PCDATA =“parsed character data”, can
contain no XML markup chars
• Use entities to replace markup chars
• “X+” means one or more instances of X
• “X*” means zero or more instances of X
• “X?” means zero or one instances of X
 Where to put DTDs
• Can be embedded in the DOCTYPE
declaration, as in previous example
• SYSTEM DTD refers to a file on the same
machine:

• PUBLIC DTD gives a URL to the DTD:

 XML Schema
• Document definition file is also an XML
document, unlike DTD
• Gives much tighter control over contents
of XML document
• See
http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/CR-xmlschema-0-
for details
 XHTML
• HTML that conforms to XML format
• Stricter grammar rules than HTML 4.01
Strict
• All tag names in lower case
• V
 Acknowledgements
Examples taken from Sun J2EE tutorial,
http://java.sun.com/webservices/docs/1.3/tut
orial/doc/IntroXML.html