What's XML?

Black_Hobbit

What Exactly is XML?

What Should one use it for?

How does one use it?

Weedpacket

http://www.w3.org/XML/

Black_Hobbit

I don't want to sign up for anything, I just wanted to know what it is. I looked at a couple tutorials before, but I've never understood what it acctually did. Why would one use this?

planetsim

What is XML?
XML stands for EXtensible Markup Language
XML is a markup language much like HTML
XML was designed to describe data
XML tags are not predefined. You must define your own tags
XML uses a Document Type Definition (DTD) or an XML Schema to describe the data
XML with a DTD or XML Schema is designed to be self-descriptive

From w3schools.com

Black_Hobbit

Why would one use this?
How exactly? See first post.

LordShryku

You ever wanted to deal with, say comma delimited data? Can get pretty messy parsing that, especially if some of the data has comma's in it. XML is a great way of storing and sending data. I know a lot of people that just use XML files to store data, rather than databases.

pyro

Originally posted by Black Hobbit
Why would one use this?

Here's one example of XML in use: http://www.ryanbrill.com/software/xmlguestbook/guestbook.php

Weedpacket

Originally posted by Black Hobbit
I don't want to sign up for anything, I just wanted to know what it is.

Er? Who said anything about signing up for anything?
Oh, I see what you mean; the URL should have been

http://www.w3.org/XML/#resources, cf. http://www.w3.org/XML/1999/XML-in-10-points

planetsim

Originally posted by pyro
Here's one example of XML in use: http://www.ryanbrill.com/software/xmlguestbook/guestbook.php

Pyro not sure if thats your site but if it is maybe have a XSL stylesheet to spruce it up a little, i hate plain looking XML. But v good example

piersk

Nah, his site is: http://www.ryanbrill.com

What he linked to is justa guestbook he wrote...

goldbug

THis sounds an awful lot like someone's homework. 😛

bad76

Originally posted by Black Hobbit
What Exactly is XML?

Is a tag-based language to DESCRIBE the content of a file.

What Should one use it for?[/B]

Any guy can use it for store data, and for easily exchange it.

Any examples?

The soap is an XML based protocol to send this data over http (it's used by the WEB SERVICES...)
"Tech Smith Camtasia" saves the video project in xml:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Project_Data Version="1.0">
<UI_Layout>
<Video>1</Video>
<AudioOne>1</AudioOne>
<AudioTwo>1</AudioTwo>
<Zoom>0</Zoom>
<Callout>0</Callout>
<Hotspots>0</Hotspots>
</UI_Layout>
...
The new microsoft longhorn... well, in this environment all is an XML.

How does one use it? [/B]

Follow this rules:

You can use "<" and ">" to create a tag.
A <tag> must be closed from </tag>.
You cannot interleave any tag:
<tag1>
<tag2>
</tag1>
</tag2>
is not allowed.
You can nest the tag:
<tag1>
<tag2>
</tag2>
</tag1>

That'all...

planetsim

Originally posted by goldbug
THis sounds an awful lot like someone's homework. 😛

actually come to think of it, why would someone want to post questions like that usually most rant real quickly nothing to the point.