XML Basics

With thanks
Slides from Nitin Rastogi

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 1

Lecture objectives
• To introduce the basic components of XML.

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 2

Lecture Outline
• Introduction
• The anatomy of XML document
• Components of XML document
• XML validation
• Rules for well-formed XML document
• XML DTD
• More XML components
• References
• Reading list

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 3

Introduction
• What is XML?

• How can XML be used?

• What does XML look like?

• XML and HTML

• XML is free and extensible

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 4

What is XML?
• XML stands for Extensible Markup Language.

• XML developed by the World Wide Web Consortium ([Link])

• Created in 1996. The first specification was published in 1998 by the W3C
• It is specifically designed for delivering information over the internet.

• XML like HTML is a markup language, but unlike HTML it doesn’t have
predefined elements.

• You create your own elements and you assign them any name you like, hence the
term extensible.

• HTML describes the presentation of the content, XML describes the content.

• You can use XML to describe virtually any type of document: Koran, works of
Shakespeare, and others.
• Go to [Link] to download
ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 5
How can XML be Used?
• XML is used to Exchange Data
• With XML, data can be exchanged between
incompatible systems
• With XML, financial information can be exchanged
over the Internet
• XML can be used to Share Data
• XML can be used to Store Data
• XML can make your Data more Useful
• XML can be used to Create new Languages

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 6

 What does XML look like?
<Bibliography>

<Book>
<Title> Java </Title>
Book <Author> Mustafa </Author>
Title Author year
<Year> 1995 </year>
</Book>
Java Mustafa 1995 …
Pascal Ahmed 1980 …
Basic Ali 1975 …
<Book>
Oracle Emad 1973
<Title> Oracle </Title>
…. …. <Author> Emad </Author>
<Year> 1973 </Year>
Relation </Book>
….
….
</ Bibliography>

XML document
ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 7
XML and HTML …

• XML is not a replacement for HTML

• XML was designed to carry data
• XML and HTML were designed with different goals
• XML was designed to describe data and to focus on what
data is
• HTML was designed to display data and to focus on how
data looks.
• HTML is about displaying information, while XML is
about describing information

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 8

XML and HTML
• HTML is for humans
• HTML describes web pages
• You don’t want to see error messages about the web pages you visit
• Browsers ignore and/or correct as many HTML errors as they can, so
HTML is often sloppy

• XML is for computers

• XML describes data
• The rules are strict and errors are not allowed
• In this way, XML is like a programming language
• Current versions of most browsers can display XML

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 9

XML is free and extensible
• XML tags are not predefined
• You must "invent" your own tags
• The tags used to mark up HTML documents and the
structure of HTML documents are predefined
• The author of HTML documents can only use tags that
are defined in the HTML standard

• XML allows the author to define his own tags and

his own document structure, hence the term
extensible.

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 10

 The Anatomy of XML Document

<?xml version:”1.0”?>
XML
Processing
Declaration
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href=“[Link]"?> instruction

Comments <!-- File name: [Link] -->

Attribute
<Bibliography>
<Book ISBN=“1-111-122”>
<Title> Java </Title>
<Author> Mustafa </Author>
<Year> 1995 </Year>
</Book>
Root or document Elements nested
.
element Within root element
.
<Book>
<Title> Oracle </Title>
<Author> Emad </Author>
<Year> 1973 </Year>
</Book>
</Bibliography>

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 11

Components of an XML Document
• Elements
• Each element has a beginning and ending tag
• <TAG_NAME>...</TAG_NAME>
• Elements can be empty (<TAG_NAME />)

• Attributes
• Describes an element; e.g. data type, data range, etc.
• Can only appear on beginning tag
• Example: <Book ISBN = “1-111-123”>

• Processing instructions
• Encoding specification (Unicode by default)
• Namespace declaration
• Schema declaration

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 12

XML declaration
• The XML declaration looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8“ standalone="yes"?>

• The XML declaration is not required by browsers, but is required by most

XML processors (so include it!)

• If present, the XML declaration must be first--not even white space should
precede it

• Note that the brackets are <? and ?>

• version="1.0" is required (I am not sure it is the only version so far)

• encoding can be "UTF-8" (ASCII) or "UTF-16" (Unicode), or something

else, or it can be omitted

• standalone tells whether there is a separate DTD

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 13

Processing Instructions
• PIs (Processing Instructions) may occur anywhere in the XML document
(but usually in the beginning)

• A PI is a command to the program processing the XML document to

handle it in a certain way

• XML documents are typically processed by more than one program

• Programs that do not recognize a given PI should just ignore it

• General format of a PI: <?target instructions?>

• Example: <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css“

href="[Link]"?>

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 14

XML Elements
• An XML element is everything from the element's start
tag to the element's end tag
• XML Elements are extensible and they have
relationships
• XML Elements have simple naming rules
• Names can contain letters, numbers, and other characters
• Names must not start with a number or punctuation character
• Names must not start with the letters xml (or XML or Xml ..)
• Names cannot contain spaces

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 15

XML Attributes
• XML elements can have attributes
• Data can be stored in child elements or in attributes
• Should you avoid using attributes?
• Here are some of the problems using attributes:

• attributes cannot contain multiple values (child elements can)

• attributes are not easily expandable (for future changes)

• attributes cannot describe structures (child elements can)

• attributes are more difficult to manipulate by program code

• attribute values are not easy to test against a Document Type Definition
(DTD) - which is used to define the legal elements of an XML document

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 16

Distinction between subelement and attribute
• In the context of documents, attributes are part of markup, while subelement
contents are part of the basic document contents

• In the context of data representation, the difference is unclear and may be

confusing

• Same information can be represented in two ways

• <Book … Publisher = “McGraw Hill” … </Book>

• <Book>
…
<Publisher> McGraw Hill </Publisher>
…
</Book>

• Suggestion: use attributes for identifiers of elements, and use subelements

for contents

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 17

XML Validation

• Well-Formed XML document:

• Is an XML document with the correct basic syntax

• Valid XML document:

• Must be well formed plus
• Conforms to a predefined DTD or XML Schema.

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 18

Rules For Well-Formed XML
• Must begin with the XML declaration
• Must have one unique root element
• All start tags must match end-tags
• XML tags are case sensitive
• All elements must be closed
• All elements must be properly nested
• All attribute values must be quoted
• XML entities must be used for special characters
ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 19
XML DTD
• A DTD defines the legal elements of an XML
document
• defines the document structure with a list of legal elements
and attributes

• XML Schema
• XML Schema is an XML based alternative to DTD

• Errors in XML documents will stop the XML program

• XML Validators

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 20

More XML components
• Namespace

• Entities

• CDATA

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Namespace
• Overview

• Declaration

• Default namespace

• Scope

• attribute

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 22

Namespaces: Overview
• Part of XML’s extensibility

• Allow authors to differentiate between tags of the same

name (using a prefix)
• Frees author to focus on the data and decide how to best
describe it
• Allows multiple XML documents from multiple authors to
be merged

• Identified by a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)

• When a URL is used, it does NOT have to represent a live
server
ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 23
Namespaces: Declaration

xmlns: bk = “[Link]

Prefix URI(URL)

Namespace declaration

Example:

<BOOK xmlns:bk=“[Link]
<bk:TITLE> All About XML </bk:TITLE>
<bk:AUTHOR> Joe Developer </bk:AUTHOR>
<bk:PRICE currency=‘US Dollar’> 19.99 </bk:PRICE>
</BOOK>

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 24

Namespaces: Default Namespace
• An XML namespace declared without a prefix
becomes the default namespace for all sub-elements

• All elements without a prefix will belong to the

default namespace:

<BOOK
xmlns=“[Link]
<TITLE> All About XML </TITLE>
<AUTHOR> Joe Developer </AUTHOR>
</BOOK>
ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 25
Namespaces: Scope
• Unqualified elements belong to the inner-most default
namespace.
• BOOK, TITLE, and AUTHOR belong to the default book namespace

• PUBLISHER and NAME belong to the default publisher namespace

<BOOK xmlns=“[Link]/bookinfo”>
<TITLE> All About XML </TITLE>
<AUTHOR> Joe Developer </AUTHOR>
<PUBLISHER xmlns=“urn:publishers:publinfo”>
<NAME> Microsoft Press </NAME>
</PUBLISHER>
</BOOK>

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 26

Namespaces: Attributes
• Unqualified attributes do NOT belong to any
namespace
• Even if there is a default namespace

• This differs from elements, which belong to the

default namespace

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 27

Entities
• Entities provide a mechanism for textual substitution,

• e.g. Entity Substitution

&lt; <
&amp; &

• You can define your own entities

• Parsed entities can contain text and markup

• Unparsed entities can contain any data

• JPEG photos, GIF files, movies, etc.
ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 28
CDATA
• By default, all text inside an XML document is parsed
• You can force text to be treated as unparsed character data by
enclosing it in <![CDATA[ ... ]]>
• Any characters, even & and <, can occur inside a CDATA
• White space inside a CDATA is (usually) preserved
• The only real restriction is that the character sequence ]]>
cannot occur inside a CDATA
• CDATA is useful when your text has a lot of illegal
characters (for example, if your XML document contains
some HTML text)

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 29

References
• W3 Schools XML Tutorial
• [Link]

• W3C XML page

• [Link]

• XML Tutorials
• [Link]

• Online resource for markup language technologies

• [Link]

• Several Online Presentations

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 30
- Reading List
• W3 Schools XML Tutorial
• [Link]

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 31

 END

ICS 541 - 01 (062) XML Basics 32