XML

Tutorial

Simply Easy Learning

About the tutorial

XML Tutorial
This tutorial provides you the basic understanding of Extensible Markup Language
and its features.

Audience
This tutorial is designed for the readers pursuing education in software
development and Web development domain and for all the enthusiastic readers.

Prerequisites
This tutorial is designed and developed for absolute beginners. Though, awareness
of Web browsers, handling of webpages, software development process and
computer fundamentals would be beneficial.

Copyright & Disclaimer

Copyright 2014 by Tutorials Point (I) Pvt. Ltd.
All the content and graphics published in this e-book are the property of Tutorials Point (I)
Pvt. Ltd. The user of this e-book is prohibited to reuse, retain, copy, distribute or republish
any contents or a part of contents of this e-book in any manner without written consent
of the publisher.
We strive to update the contents of our website and tutorials as timely and as precisely as
possible, however, the contents may contain inaccuracies or errors. Tutorials Point (I) Pvt.
Ltd. provides no guarantee regarding the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of our
website or its contents including this tutorial. If you discover any errors on our website or
in this tutorial, please notify us at [email protected]

XML Tutorial

XML Overview

XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. It is a text-based markup language

derived from Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).
XML tags identify the data and are used to store and organize the data, rather than
specifying how to display it like HTML tags, which are used to display the data. XML
is not going to replace HTML in the near future, but it introduces new possibilities by
adopting many successful features of HTML.
There are three important characteristics of XML that make it useful in a variety of
systems and solutions:

XML is extensible: XML allows you to create your own self-descriptive tags,
or language, that suits your application.

XML carries the data, does not present it: XML allows you to store the data
irrespective of how it will be presented.

XML is a public standard: XML was developed by an organization called the

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and is available as an open standard.

XML Usage
A short list of XML usage says it all:

XML can work behind the scene to simplify the creation of HTML documents
for large web sites.

XML can be used to exchange the information between organizations and

systems.

XML Tutorial

XML can be used for offloading and reloading of databases.

XML can be used to store and arrange the data, which can customize your data
handling needs.

XML can easily be merged with style sheets to create almost any desired
output.

Virtually, any type of data can be expressed as an XML document.

What is Markup?
XML is a markup language that defines set of rules for encoding documents in a
format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. So what exactly is a
markup language? Markup is information added to a document that enhances its
meaning in certain ways, in that it identifies the parts and how they relate to each
other. More specifically, a markup language is a set of symbols that can be placed in
the text of a document to demarcate and label the parts of that document.
Following example shows how XML markup looks, when embedded in a piece of text:
<message>
<text>Hello, world!</text>
</message>
This

snippet

includes

the

markup

symbols,

or

the

tags

such

as

<message>...</message> and <text>...</text>. The tags <message> and

</message> mark the start and the end of the XML code fragment. The tags <text>
and </text> surround the text Hello, world!.

Is XML a Programming Language?

A programming language consists of grammar rules and its own vocabulary which is
used to create computer programs. These programs instructs computer to perform
specific tasks. XML does not qualify to be a programming language as it does not

XML Tutorial
perform any computation or algorithms. It is usually stored in a simple text file and
is processed by special software that is capable of interpreting XML.

XML Tutorial

XML Syntax

This chapter takes you through the simple syntax rules to write an XML document.
Following is a complete XML document:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</contact-info>
You can notice there are two kinds of information in the above example:

The markup, like <contact-info> and

The text, or the character data, Tutorials Point and (040) 123-4567.

The following diagram depicts the syntax rules to write different types of markup and
text in an XML document.

XML Tutorial

Let us see each component of the above diagram in detail:

XML Declaration
The XML document can optionally have an XML declaration. It is written as below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
Where version is the XML version and encoding specifies the character encoding used
in the document.

Syntax Rules for XML declaration

The XML declaration is case sensitive and must begin with "<?xml>" where
"xml" is written in lower-case.

If document contains XML declaration, then it strictly needs to be the first

statement of the XML document.

The XML declaration strictly needs be the first statement in the XML document.

An HTTP protocol can override the value of encoding that you put in the XML
declaration.

XML Tutorial

Tags and Elements

An XML file is structured by several XML-elements, also called XML-nodes or XMLtags. XML-elements' names are enclosed by triangular brackets < > as shown below:
<element>

Syntax Rules for Tags and Elements

Element Syntax: Each XML-element needs to be closed either with start or with end
elements as shown below:
<element>....</element>
or in simple-cases, just this way:
<element/>
Nesting of elements: An XML-element can contain multiple XML-elements as its
children, but the children elements must not overlap. i.e., an end tag of an element
must have the same name as that of the most recent unmatched start tag.
Following example shows incorrect nested tags:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<company>TutorialsPoint
<contact-info>
</company>
Following example shows correct nested tags:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<contact-info>

XML Tutorial
Root element: An XML document can have only one root element. For example,
following is not a correct XML document, because both the x and y elements occur at
the top level without a root element:
<x>...</x>
<y>...</y>
The following example shows a correctly formed XML document:
<root>
<x>...</x>
<y>...</y>
</root>
Case sensitivity: The names of XML-elements are case-sensitive. That means the
name of the start and the end elements need to be exactly in the same case.
For example, <contact-info> is different from <Contact-Info>.

Attributes
An attribute specifies a single property for the element, using a name/value pair. An
XML-element can have one or more attributes. For example:
<a href="http://www.tutorialspoint.com/">Tutorialspoint!</a>
Here, href is the attribute name and http://www.tutorialspoint.com/ is attribute value.

Syntax Rules for XML Attributes

Attribute names in XML (unlike HTML) are case sensitive. That is, HREF and
href are considered two different XML attributes.

Same attribute cannot have two values in a syntax. The following example
shows incorrect syntax because the attribute b is specified twice:
<a b="x" c="y" b="z">....</a>

XML Tutorial
Attribute names are defined without quotation marks, whereas attribute values must
always appear in quotation marks. Following example demonstrates incorrect xml
syntax:
<a b=x>....</a>
In the above syntax, the attribute value is not defined in quotation marks.

XML References
References usually allow you to add or include additional text or markup in an XML
document. References always begin with the symbol "&", which is a reserved
character and end with the symbol ";". XML has two types of references:
Entity References: An entity reference contains a name between the start and the
end delimiters. For example &amp; where amp is name. The name refers to a
predefined string of text and/or markup.
Character References: These contain references, such as &#65;, contains a hash
mark (#) followed by a number. The number always refers to the Unicode code of
a character. In this case, 65 refers to alphabet "A".

XML Text
The names of XML-elements and XML-attributes are case-sensitive, which means the
name of start and end elements need to be written in the same case.
To avoid character encoding problems, all XML files should be saved as Unicode UTF8 or UTF-16 files.
Whitespace characters like blanks, tabs and line-breaks between XML-elements and
between the XML-attributes will be ignored.
Some characters are reserved by the XML syntax itself. Hence, they cannot be used
directly. To use them, some replacement-entities are used, which are listed below:

XML Tutorial

not allowed character

replacement-entity

character description

<

&lt;

less than

>

&gt;

greater than

&

&amp;

ampersand

'

&apos;

apostrophe

"

&quot;

quotation mark

10

XML Tutorial

XML Documents

An XML document is a basic unit of XML information composed of elements and other
markup in an orderly package. An XML document can contains wide variety of data.
For example, database of numbers, numbers representing molecular structure or a
mathematical equation.

XML Document example

A simple document is given in the following example:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</contact-info>
The following image depicts the parts of XML document.

11

XML Tutorial

Document Prolog Section

The document prolog comes at the top of the document, before the root element.
This section contains:

XML declaration

Document type declaration

You can learn more about XML declaration in chapter XML Declaration.

Document Elements Section

Document Elements are the building blocks of XML. These divide the document into
a hierarchy of sections, each serving a specific purpose. You can separate a document
into multiple sections so that they can be rendered differently, or used by a search
engine. The elements can be containers, with a combination of text and other
elements.
You can learn more about XML elements in chapter XML Elements.

12

XML Tutorial

XML Declaration

This chapter covers XML declaration in detail. XML declaration contains details that
prepare an XML processor to parse the XML document. It is optional, but when it is
used, it must appear in first line of the XML document.

Syntax
Following syntax shows XML declaration:
<?xml
version="version_number"
encoding="encoding_declaration"
standalone="standalone_status"
?>

Each parameter consists of a parameter name, an equals sign (=), and parameter
value inside a quote. Following table shows the above syntax in detail:
Parameter

Parameter_value

Parameter_description

Version

1.0

Specifies the version of the XML

standard used.

13

XML Tutorial

Encoding

UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-

It defines the character encoding

10646-UCS-2,

ISO-

used in the document. UTF-8 is the

10646-UCS-4,

ISO-

default encoding used.

8859-1 to ISO-88599, ISO-2022-JP, Shift

JIS, EUC-JP
Standalone

yes or no.

It informs the parser whether the

document relies on the information
from an external source, such as
external document type definition
(DTD), for its content. The default
value is set to no. Setting it to yes
tells the processor there are no
external declarations required for
parsing the document.

Rules
An XML declaration should abide with the following rules:

If the XML declaration is present in the XML, it must be placed as the first line
in the XML document.

If the XML declaration is included, it must contain version number attribute.

The Parameter names and values are case-sensitive.

The names are always in lower case.

The order of placing the parameters is important. The correct order is:version,
encoding and standalone.

Either single or double quotes may be used.

14

XML Tutorial

The XML declaration has no closing tag i.e. </?xml>

XML Declaration Examples

Following are few examples of XML declarations:
XML declaration with no parameters:
<?xml >
XML declaration with version definition:
<?xml version="1.0">
XML declaration with all parameters defined:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
XML declaration with all parameters defined in single quotes:
<?xml version='1.0' encoding='iso-8859-1' standalone='no' ?>

15

XML Tutorial

XML Tags

Let us learn about one of the most important part of XML, the XML tags. XML tags
form the foundation of XML. They define the scope of an element in the XML. They
can also be used to insert comments, declare settings required for parsing the
environment and to insert special instructions.
We can broadly categorize XML tags as follows:

Start Tag
The beginning of every non-empty XML element is marked by a start-tag. An example
of start-tag is:
<address>

End Tag
Every element that has a start tag should end with an end-tag. An example of endtag is:
</address>
Note that the end tags include a solidus ("/") before the name of an element.

16

XML Tutorial

Empty Tag
The text that appears between start-tag and end-tag is called content. An element
which has no content is termed as empty. An empty element can be represented in
two ways as below:
(1) A start-tag immediately followed by an end-tag as shown below:
<hr></hr>

(2) A complete empty-element tag is as shown below:

<hr />
Empty-element tags may be used for any element which has no content.

XML Tags Rules

Following are the rules that need to be followed to use XML tags:

Rule 1
XML tags are case-sensitive. Following line of code is an example of wrong syntax
</Address>, because of the case difference in two tags, which is treated as erroneous
syntax in XML.
<address>This is wrong syntax</Address>
Following code shows a correct way, where we use the same case to name the start
and the end tag.
<address>This is correct syntax</address>

Rule 2
XML tags must be closed in an appropriate order, i.e., an XML tag opened inside
another element must be closed before the outer element is closed. For example:

17

XML Tutorial

<outer_element>
<internal_element>
This tag is closed before the outer_element
</internal_element>
</outer_element>

18

XML Tutorial

XML Elements

XML elements can be defined as building blocks of an XML. Elements can behave as
containers to hold text, elements, attributes, media objects or all of these.
Each XML document contains one or more elements, the scope of which are either
delimited by start and end tags, or for empty elements, by an empty-element tag.

Syntax
Following is the syntax to write an XML element:
<element-name attribute1 attribute2>
....content
</element-name>
where

element-name is the name of the element. The name its case in the start
and end tags must match.

attribute1, attribute2 are attributes of the element separated by white

spaces. An attribute defines a property of the element. It associates a name
with a value, which is a string of characters. An attribute is written as:
name = "value"
The name is followed by an = sign and a string value inside double(" ") or
single(' ') quotes.

19

XML Tutorial

Empty Element
An empty element (element with no content) has following syntax:
<name attribute1 attribute2.../>
Example of an XML document using various XML element:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<address category="residence">
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
<address/>
</contact-info>

XML Elements Rules

Following rules are required to be followed for XML elements:

An element name can contain any alphanumeric characters. The only

punctuation marks allowed in names are the hyphen (-), under-score (_) and
period (.).

Names are case sensitive. For example, Address, address, and ADDRESS are
different names.

Start and end tags of an element must be identical.

An element, which is a container, can contain text or elements as seen in the

above example.

20

XML Tutorial

XML Attributes

This chapter describes about the XML attributes. Attributes are part of the XML
elements. An element can have multiple unique attributes. Attribute gives more
information about XML elements. To be more precise, they define properties of
elements. An XML attribute is always a name-value pair.

Syntax
An XML attribute has following syntax:
<element-name attribute1 attribute2 >
....content..
< /element-name>
where attribute1 and attribute2 has the following form:
name = "value"
The value has to be in double (" ") or single (' ') quotes. Here, attribute1 and attribute2
are unique attribute labels.
Attributes are used to add a unique label to an element, place the label in a category,
add a Boolean flag, or otherwise associate it with some string of data.
Following example demonstrates the use of attributes:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE garden [

21

XML Tutorial

<!ELEMENT garden (plants)*>

<!ELEMENT plants (#PCDATA)>
<!ATTLIST plants category CDATA #REQUIRED>
]>
<garden>
<plants category="flowers" />
<plants category="shrubs">
</plants>
</garden>
Attributes are used to distinguish among elements of the same name. When you do
not want to create a new element for every situation. Hence, use of an attribute can
add a little more detail in differentiating two or more similar elements.
In the above example we have categorized the plants by including attribute
category and assigning different values to each of the elements. Hence we have two
categories of plants, one flowers and other color. Hence we have two plant elements
with different attributes.
You can also observe that we have declared this attribute at the beginning of the
XML.

Attribute Types
Following table lists the type of attributes:
Attribute Type

Description

StringType

It takes any literal string as a value. CDATA is a

StringType. CDATA is character data. This means, any
string of non-markup characters is a legal part of the
attribute.

22

XML Tutorial

TokenizedType

This is more constrained type. The validity constraints

noted in the grammar are applied after the attribute
value is normalized. The TokenizedType attributes are
given as:
ID: It is used to specify the element as unique.
IDREF: It is used to reference an ID that has been
named for another element.
IDREFS: It is used to reference all IDs of an element.
ENTITY: It indicates that the attribute will represent an
external entity in the document.
ENTITIES: It indicates that the attribute will represent
external entities in the document.
NMTOKEN: It is similar to CDATA with restrictions on
what data can be part of the attribute.
NMTOKENS: It is similar to CDATA with restrictions on
what data can be part of the attribute.

EnumeratedType

This has a list of predefined values in its declaration.

out of which, it must assign one value. There are two
types of enumerated attribute:
NotationType: It declares that an element will be
referenced to a NOTATION declared somewhere else in
the XML document.

23

XML Tutorial

Enumeration: Enumeration allows you to define a

specific list of values that the attribute value must
match.

Element Attribute Rules

Following are the rules that need to be followed for attributes:

An attribute name must not appear more than once in the same start-tag or
empty-element tag.

An attribute must be declared in the Document Type Definition (DTD) using an

Attribute-List Declaration.

Attribute values must not contain direct or indirect entity references to external
entities.

The replacement text of any entity referred to directly or indirectly in an

attribute value must not contain either less than sign <

24

XML Tutorial

XML Comments

This chapter explains how comments work in XML documents. XML comments are
similar to HTML comments. The comments are added as notes or lines for
understanding the purpose of an XML code.
Comments can be used to include related links, information and terms. They are
visible only in the source code; not in the XML code. Comments may appear anywhere
in XML code.

Syntax
XML comment has following syntax:
<!-------Your comment----->

A comment starts with <!-- and ends with -->. You can add textual notes as
comments between the characters. You must not nest one comment inside the other.

Example
Following example demonstrates the use of comments in XML document:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<!---Students grades are uploaded by months---->
<class_list>
<student>

25

XML Tutorial

<name>Tanmay</name>
<grade>A</grade>
</student>
</class_list>
Any text between <!--

26

XML Tutorial

XML Character Entities

This chapter describes the XML Character Entities. Before we understand the
Character Entities, let us first understand what an XML entity is.
As put by W3 Consortium the definition of entity is as follows:
The document entity serves as the root of the entity tree and a starting-point
for an XML processor.
This means, entities are the placeholders in XML. These can be declared in the
document prolog or in a DTD. There are different types of entities and this chapter
will discuss Character Entity.
Both, the HTML and the XML, have some symbols reserved for their use, which cannot
be used as content in XML code. For example, < and > signs are used for opening
and closing XML tags. To display these special characters, the character entities are
used.
There are few special characters or symbols which are not available to be typed
directly

from

keyboard.

Character

Entities

can

be

used

to

display

those

symbols/special characters also.

Types of Character Entities

There are three types of character entities:

Predefined Character Entities

27

XML Tutorial

Numbered Character Entities

Named Character Entities

Predefined Character Entities

They are introduced to avoid the ambiguity while using some symbols. For example,
an ambiguity is observed when less than (<) or greater than (>) symbol is used with
the angle tag (<>). Character entities are basically used to delimit tags in XML.
Following is a list of pre-defined character entities from XML specification. These can
be used to express characters without ambiguity.

Ampersand: &amp;

Single quote: &apos;

Greater than: &gt;

Less than: &lt;

Double quote: &quot;

Numeric Character Entities

The numeric reference is used to refer to a character entity. Numeric reference can
either be in decimal or hexadecimal format. As there are thousands of numeric
references available, these are a bit hard to remember. Numeric reference refers to
the character by its number in the Unicode character set.
General syntax for decimal numeric reference is:
&# decimal number ;
General syntax for hexadecimal numeric reference is:
&#x Hexadecimal number ;
The following table lists some predefined character entities with their numeric values:

28

XML Tutorial

Entity name

Character

Decimal reference

Hexadecimal reference

quot

"

&#34;

&#x22;

amp

&

&#38;

&#x26;

apos

'

&#39;

&#x27;

lt

<

&#60;

&#x3C;

gt

>

&#62;

&#x3E;

Named Character Entity

As it is hard to remember the numeric characters, the most preferred type of
character entity is the named character entity. Here, each entity is identified with a
name.
For example:

'Acute' represents capital

character with acute accent.

'ugrave' represents the small

with grave accent.

29

XML Tutorial

XML CDATA Sections

This chapter discusses the XML CDATA section. The term CDATA means, Character
Data. CDATA are defined as blocks of text that are not parsed by the parser, but are
otherwise recognized as markup.
The predefined entities such as &lt;, &gt;, and &amp; require typing and are generally
difficult to read in the markup. In such cases, CDATA section can be used. By using
CDATA section, you are commanding the parser that the particular section of the
document contains no markup and should be treated as regular text.

Syntax
Following is the syntax for CDATA section:
<![CDATA[
characters with markup
]]>
The above syntax is composed of three sections:

CDATA

Start

section

CDATA

begins

with

the

nine-character

delimiter <![CDATA[

CDATA End section - CDATA section ends with ]]> delimiter.

30

XML Tutorial

CData section - Characters between these two enclosures are interpreted as

characters, and not as markup. This section may contain markup characters
(<, >, and &), but they are ignored by the XML processor.

Example
The following markup code shows example of CDATA. Here, each character written
inside the CDATA section is ignored by the parser.
<script>
<![CDATA[
<message> Welcome to TutorialsPoint </message>
]] >
</script >
In the above syntax, everything between <message> and </message> is treated as
character data and not as markup.

CDATA Rules
The given rules are required to be followed for XML CDATA:

CDATA cannot contain the string "]]>" anywhere in the XML document.

Nesting is not allowed in CDATA section.

31

XML Tutorial

XML Whitespaces

This chapter discusses white space handling in XML documents. Whitespace is a

collection of spaces, tabs, and newlines. They are generally used to make a document
more readable.
XML document contain two types of white spaces (a) Significant Whitespace
and(b) Insignificant Whitespace. Both are explained below with examples.

Significant Whitespace
A significant Whitespace occurs within the element which contain text and markup
present together. For example:
<name>TanmayPatil</name>
and
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>

The above two elements are different because of the space between Tanmay and
Patil. Any program reading this element in an XML file is obliged to maintain the
distinction.

32

XML Tutorial

Insignificant Whitespace
Insignificant whitespace means the space where only element content is allowed. For
example:
<address.category="residence">
or

<address....category="..residence">
The above two examples are same. Here, the space is represented by dots (.). In the
above example, the space between address and category is insignificant.
A special attribute named xml:space may be attached to an element. This indicates
that whitespace should not be removed for that element by the application. You can
set this attribute to default or preserve as shown in the example below:
<!ATTLIST address

xml:space (default|preserve) 'preserve'>

Where:

The value default signals that the default whitespace processing modes of an
application are acceptable for this element;

The value preserve indicates the application to preserve all the whitespaces.

33

XML Tutorial

XML Processing

This chapter describes the Processing Instructions (PIs). As defined by the XML 1.0
Recommendation,

"Processing instructions (PIs) allow documents to contain instructions for

applications. PIs are not part of the character data of the document, but MUST
be passed through to the application.
Processing instructions (PIs) can be used to pass information to applications. PIs can
appear anywhere in the document outside the markup. They can appear in the prolog,
including the document type definition (DTD), in textual content, or after the
document.

Syntax
Following is the syntax of PI:
<?target instructions?>
Where:

target - identifies the application to which the instruction is directed.

instruction - it is a character that describes the information for the application

to process.

A PI starts with a special tag <? and ends with ?>. Processing of the contents ends
immediately after the string ?> is encountered.

34

XML Tutorial

Example
PIs are rarely used. They are mostly used to link XML document to a style sheet.
Following is an example:
<?xml-stylesheet href="tutorialspointstyle.css" type="text/css"?>
Here,

the

target

is

an

xml-

stylesheet. href="tutorialspointstyle.css" and type="text/css"are data or instructions

that the target application will use at the time of processing the given XML document.
In this case, a browser recognizes the target by indicating that the XML should be
transformed before being shown; the first attribute states that the type of the
transform is XSL and the second attribute points to its location.

Processing Instructions Rules

A PI can contain any data except the combination ?>, which is interpreted as the
closing delimiter. Here are two examples of valid PIs:
<?welcome to pg=10 of tutorials point?>

<?welcome?>

35

XML Tutorial

XML Encoding

Encoding is the process of converting unicode characters into their equivalent binary
representation. When the XML processor reads an XML document, it encodes the
document depending on the type of encoding. Hence, we need to specify the type of
encoding in the XML declaration.

Encoding Types
There are mainly two types of encoding:

UTF-8

UTF-16

UTF stands for UCS Transformation Format, and UCS itself means Universal Character
Set. The number 8 or 16 refers to the number of bits used to represent a character.
They are either 8(one byte) or 16(two bytes). For the documents without encoding
information, UTF-8 is set by default.

Syntax
Encoding type is included in the prolog section of the XML document. The syntax for
UTF-8 encoding is as below:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
Syntax for UTF-16 encoding:

36

XML Tutorial

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-16" standalone="no" ?>

Example
Following example shows declaration of encoding:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<contact-info>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</contact-info>

In the above example, encoding="UTF-8", specifies that 8-bits are used to

represent the characters. To represent 16-bit characters, UTF-16 encoding can be
used.
The XML files encoded with UTF-8 tend to be smaller in size than those encoded with
UTF-16 format.

37

XML Tutorial

XML Validation

Validation is a process by which an XML document is validated. An XML document

is said to be valid if its contents match with the elements, attributes and associated
document type declaration (DTD), and if the document complies with the constraints
expressed in it. Validation is dealt in two ways by the XML parser. They are:

Well-formed XML document

Valid XML document

Well-formed XML document

An XML document is said to be well-formed if it adheres to the following rules:

Non

DTD

XML

files

must

use

the

predefined

character

entities

for amp(&),apos(single quote), gt(>), lt(<), quot(double quote).

It must follow the ordering of the tag. i.e., the inner tag must be closed before
closing the outer tag.

Each of its opening tags must have a closing tag or it must be a self ending
tag.(<title>....</title> or <title/>).

It must have only one attribute in a start tag, which needs to be quoted.

amp(&), apos(single quote), gt(>), lt(<), quot(double quote) entities

other than these must be declared.

38

XML Tutorial

Example
Example of well-formed XML document:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<!DOCTYPE address
[
<!ELEMENT address (name,company,phone)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT company (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT phone (#PCDATA)>
]>
<address>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</address>

Above example is said to be well-formed as:

It defines the type of document. Here, the document type is element type.

It includes a root element named as address.

Each of the child elements among name, company and phone is enclosed in its
self-explanatory tag.

Order of the tags is maintained.

Valid XML document

If an XML document is well-formed and has an associated Document Type Declaration
(DTD), then it is said to be a valid XML document. We will study more about DTD in
the chapter XML - DTDs.

39

XML Tutorial

The XML Document Type Declaration, commonly known as DTD, is a way to describe
XML language precisely. DTDs check vocabulary and validity of the structure of XML
documents against grammatical rules of appropriate XML language.
An XML DTD can be either specified inside the document, or it can be kept in a
separate document and then liked separately.

Syntax
Basic syntax of a DTD is as follows:
<!DOCTYPE element DTD identifier

40

XML Tutorial

DTD identifier is an identifier for the document type definition, which may be
the path to a file on the system or URL to a file on the internet. If the DTD is
pointing to external path, it is called External Subset.

The square brackets [ ] enclose an optional list of entity declarations

called Internal Subset.

Internal DTD
A DTD is referred to as an internal DTD if elements are declared within the XML files.
To refer it as internal DTD, standalone attribute in XML declaration must be set
to yes. This means, the declaration works independent of external source.

Syntax
The syntax of internal DTD is as shown:
<!DOCTYPE root-element [element-declarations]>
where root-element is the name of root element and element-declarations is where
you declare the elements.

Example
Following is a simple example of internal DTD:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
<!DOCTYPE address [
<!ELEMENT address (name,company,phone)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT company (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT phone (#PCDATA)>
]>
<address>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>

41

XML Tutorial

</address>
Let us go through the above code:
Start Declaration- Begin the XML declaration with following statement
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes" ?>
DTD- Immediately after the XML header, the document type declaration follows,
commonly referred to as the DOCTYPE:
<!DOCTYPE address [
The DOCTYPE declaration has an exclamation mark (!) at the start of the element
name. The DOCTYPE informs the parser that a DTD is associated with this XML
document.
DTD Body- The DOCTYPE declaration is followed by body of the DTD, where you
declare elements, attributes, entities, and notations:
<!ELEMENT address (name,company,phone)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT company (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT phone_no (#PCDATA)>
Several elements are declared here that make up the vocabulary of the <name>
document. <!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)> defines the element name to be of type
"#PCDATA". Here #PCDATA means parse-able text data.
End Declaration - Finally, the declaration section of the DTD is closed using a closing
bracket and a closing angle bracket (]>). This effectively ends the definition, and
thereafter, the XML document follows immediately.

Rules

The document type declaration must appear at the start of the document
(preceded only by the XML header) it is not permitted anywhere else within
the document.

42

XML Tutorial

Similar to the DOCTYPE declaration, the element declarations must start with an exclamation
mark.

The Name in the document type declaration must match the element type of the root element.

External DTD
In external DTD elements are declared outside the XML file. They are accessed by
specifying the system attributes which may be either the legal .dtd file or a valid URL.
To refer it as external DTD, standalone attribute in the XML declaration must be set
as no. This means, declaration includes information from the external source.

Syntax
Following is the syntax for external DTD:
<!DOCTYPE root-element SYSTEM "file-name">
where file-name is the file with .dtd extension.

Example
The following example shows external DTD usage:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<!DOCTYPE address SYSTEM "address.dtd">
<address>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</address>
The content of the DTD file address.dtd are as shown:
<!ELEMENT address (name,company,phone)>
<!ELEMENT name (#PCDATA)>
<!ELEMENT company (#PCDATA)>

43

XML Tutorial

<!ELEMENT phone (#PCDATA)>

Types
You can refer to an external DTD by using either system identifiers or public
identifiers.

SYSTEM IDENTIFIERS
A system identifier enables you to specify the location of an external file containing
DTD declarations. Syntax is as follows:
<!DOCTYPE name SYSTEM "address.dtd" [...]>
As you can see, it contains keyword SYSTEM and a URI reference pointing to the
location of the document.

PUBLIC IDENTIFIERS
Public identifiers provide a mechanism to locate DTD resources and are written as
below:
<!DOCTYPE name PUBLIC "-//Beginning XML//DTD Address Example//EN">
As you can see, it begins with keyword PUBLIC, followed by a specialized identifier.
Public identifiers are used to identify an entry in a catalog. Public identifiers can follow
any format, however, a commonly used format is called Formal Public Identifiers, or
FPIs.

XML Schemas
44

XML Tutorial

XML Schema is commonly known as XML Schema Definition (XSD). It is used to

describe and validate the structure and the content of XML data. XML schema defines
the elements, attributes and data types. Schema element supports Namespaces. It
is similar to a database schema that describes the data in a database.

Syntax
You need to declare a schema in your XML document as follows:
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">

Example
The following example shows how to use schema:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xs:schema xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema">
<xs:element name="contact">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="company" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="phone" type="xs:int" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
</xs:schema>

45

XML Tutorial
The basic idea behind XML Schemas is that they describe the legitimate format that
an XML document can take.

Elements
As we saw in the chapter XML - Elements, elements are the building blocks of XML
document. An element can be defined within an XSD as follows:
<xs:element name="x" type="y"/>

Definition Types
You can define XML schema elements in following ways:
Simple Type - Simple type element is used only in the context of the text. Some of
predefined simple types are: xs:integer, xs:boolean, xs:string, xs:date. For example:
<xs:element name="phone_number" type="xs:int" />
Complex Type - A complex type is a container for other element definitions. This
allows you to specify which child elements an element can contain and to provide
some structure within your XML documents. For example:
<xs:element name="Address">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="company" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="phone" type="xs:int" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
In the above example, Address element consists of child elements. This is a container
for other <xs:element> definitions, that allows to build a simple hierarchy of
elements in the XML document.

46

XML Tutorial
Global Types - With global type, you can define a single type in your document,
which can be used by all other references. For example, suppose you want to
generalize the person and company for different addresses of the company. In such
case, you can define a general type as below:
<xs:element name="AddressType">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="name" type="xs:string" />
<xs:element name="company" type="xs:string" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
Now let us use this type in our example as below:
<xs:element name="Address1">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="address" type="AddressType" />
<xs:element name="phone1" type="xs:int" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>
</xs:element>
<xs:element name="Address2">
<xs:complexType>
<xs:sequence>
<xs:element name="address" type="AddressType" />
<xs:element name="phone2" type="xs:int" />
</xs:sequence>
</xs:complexType>

47

XML Tutorial

</xs:element>
Instead of having to define the name and the company twice (once for Address1 and
once for Address2), we now have a single definition. This makes maintenance
simpler, i.e., if you decide to add "Postcode" elements to the address, you need to
add them at just one place.

Attributes
Attributes in XSD provide extra information within an element. Attributes have
name and type property as shown below:
<xs:attribute name="x" type="y"/>

XML Tree Structure

48

XML Tutorial

An XML document is always descriptive. The tree structure is often referred to as XML
Tree and plays an important role to describe any XML document easily.
The tree structure contains root (parent) elements, child elements and so on. By
using tree structure, you can get to know all succeeding branches and sub-branches
starting from the root. The parsing starts at the root, then moves down the first
branch to an element, take the first branch from there, and so on to the leaf nodes.

Example
Following example demonstrates simple XML tree structure:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<Company>
<Employee>
<FirstName>Tanmay</FirstName>
<LastName>Patil</LastName>
<ContactNo>1234567890</ContactNo>
<Email>[email protected]</Email>
<Address>
<City>Bangalore</City>
<State>Karnataka</State>
<Zip>560212</Zip>
</Address>
</Employee>
</Company>

49

XML Tutorial
Following tree structure represents the above XML document:

In the above diagram, there is a root element named as <company>. Inside that,
there is one more element <Employee>. Inside the employee element, there are five
branches

named

<FirstName>,

<LastName>,

<ContactNo>,

<Email>,

and

<Address>. Inside the <Address> element, there are three sub-branches, named
<City> <State> and <Zip>.

XML Document Object Model

50

XML Tutorial

The Document Object Model (DOM) is the foundation of XML. XML documents have a
hierarchy of informational units called nodes; DOM is a way of describing those nodes
and the relationships between them.
A DOM Document is a collection of nodes or pieces of information organized in a
hierarchy. This hierarchy allows a developer to navigate through the tree looking for
specific information. Because it is based on a hierarchy of information, the DOM is
said to be tree based.
The XML DOM, on the other hand, also provides an API that allows a developer to
add, edit, move, or remove nodes in the tree at any point in order to create an
application.

Example
The following example (sample.htm) parses an XML document ("address.xml") into
an XML DOM object and then extracts some information from it with JavaScript:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<h1>TutorialsPoint DOM example </h1>
<div>
<b>Name:</b> <span id="name"></span><br>
<b>Company:</b> <span id="company"></span><br>
<b>Phone:</b> <span id="phone"></span>
</div>

51

XML Tutorial

<script>
if (window.XMLHttpRequest)
{// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari
xmlhttp = new XMLHttpRequest();
}
else
{// code for IE6, IE5
xmlhttp = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
}
xmlhttp.open("GET","/xml/address.xml",false);
xmlhttp.send();
xmlDoc=xmlhttp.responseXML;

document.getElementById("name").innerHTML=
xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("name")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue;
document.getElementById("company").innerHTML=
xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("company")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue;
document.getElementById("phone").innerHTML=
xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("phone")[0].childNodes[0].nodeValue;
</script>
</body>
</html>
Contents of address.xml are as below:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</contact-info>

52

XML Tutorial

Now let us keep these two files sample.htm and address.xml in the same
directory /xml and execute the sample.htm file by opening it in any browser. This
should produce an output as shown below:

Here, you can see how each of the child nodes is extracted to display their values.

XML Namespaces
53

XML Tutorial

A Namespace is a set of unique names. Namespace is a mechanisms by which

element and attribute name can be assigned to group. The Namespace is identified
by Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).

Namespace Declaration
A Namspace is declared using reserved attributes. Such an attribute name must
either be xmlns or begin with xmlns: shown as below:
<element xmlns:name="URL">

Syntax

The Namespace starts with the keyword xmlns.

The word name is the Namespace prefix.

The URL is the Namespace identifier.

Example
Namespace affects only a limited area in the document. An element containing the
declaration and all of its descendants are in the scope of the Namespace. Following
is a simple example of XML Namespace:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<cont:contact xmlns:cont="www.tutorialspoint.com/profile">
<cont:name>Tanmay Patil</cont:name>
<cont:company>TutorialsPoint</cont:company>
<cont:phone>(011) 123-4567</cont:phone>

54

XML Tutorial

</cont:contact>
Here, the Namespace prefix is cont, and the Namespace identifier (URI)
aswww.tutorialspoint.com/profile. This means, the element names and attribute
names with the cont prefix (including the contact element), all belong to
thewww.tutorialspoint.com/profile namespace.

XML Databases
55

XML Tutorial

XML Database is used to store the huge amount of information in the XML format. As
the use of XML is increasing in every field, it is required to have the secured place to
store the XML documents. The data stored in the database can be queried
using XQuery, serialized, and exported into desired format.

XML Database Types

There are two major types of XML databases:

XML- enabled

Native XML (NXD)

XML- Enabled Database

XML enabled database is nothing but the extension provided for the conversion of
XML document. This is relational database, where data are stored in tables consisting
of rows and columns. The tables contain set of records, which in turn consist of fields.

Native XML Database

Native XML database is based on the container rather than table format. It can store
large amount of XML document and data. Native XML database is queried by
the XPath-expressions. Native XML database has advantage over the XML-enabled
database. It is highly capable to store, query and maintain the XML document than
XML-enabled database.

Example
Following example demonstrates XML database:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>

56

XML Tutorial

<contact1>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</contact1>
<contact2>
<name>Manisha Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 789-4567</phone>
</contact2>
</contact-info>
Here, a table of contacts is created that holds the records of contacts (contact1 and
contact2), which in turn consists of three entities - name, company and phone.

XML Viewers

57

XML Tutorial

This chapter describes various methods to view an XML document. An XML document
can be viewed using a simple text editor or any browser. Most of the major browsers
supports XML. XML files can be opened in browser by just double clicking on the XML
document (if it is a local file) or by typing the URL path in the address bar (if the file
is located on server), in the same way as we open other files in the browser. XML
files are saved with a ".xml" extension.
Let us explore various methods by which we can view an XML file. Following example
(sample.xml) is used to view in all the sections of this chapter.
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</contact-info>

Text Editors
Any simple text editor such as Notepad, Textpad or TextEdit can be used to create
or view an XML document as shown below:

58

XML Tutorial

Firefox Browser
Open the above XML code in chrome by double clicking on the file, the XML code
displays coding with colour, which makes the code readable. It shows plus(+) or
minus (-) sign at the left side in the XML element. When we click on the minus sign(), the code hides and by clicking on plus(+) sign the code lines get expanded. The
output in Firefox is as shown below:

59

XML Tutorial

Chrome Browser
Open the above XML code in a chrome browser. The code gets displayed as shown
below:

Errors in XML Document

If your XML code has some tags missing then a message is displayed in the browser.
Let us try to open the following XML file in chrome:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<contact-info>
<name>Tanmay Patil</name>
<company>TutorialsPoint</company>
<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>
</ontact-info>
In the code above, the start and end tags are not matching (refer the contact_info
tag), hence the an error message is displayed by the browser as shown below:

60

XML Tutorial

XML Editors

XML Editor is a markup language editor. The XML documents can be edited or created
using existing editors such as Notepad, Wordpad or any similar text editor. You can
also find a professional XML editor online or for downloading, which has more
powerful editing features such as:

It automatically closes the tags that are left open.

It strictly checks syntax.

It highlights XML syntax with colour for increased readability.

It helps you to write a valid XML code.

It provides automatic verification of XML documents against DTDs and

Schemas.

Open Source XML Editors

There are some open source XML editors given below:

Xerlin: Xerlin is an open source XML editor for the Java 2 platform released

under an Apache license. It is a Java based XML modelling application, for

creating and editing XML files easily.

CAM - Content Assembly Mechanism: CAM XML Editor tool with XML+JSON+SQL

Open-XDX sponsored by Oracle.

61

XML Tutorial

XML Parsers

XML parser is a software library or a package that provides interface for client
applications to work with XML documents. It checks for proper format of the XML
document and may also validate the XML documents. Modern day browsers have
built-in XML parsers.
Following diagram shows how XML parser interacts with XML document:

The goal of a parser is to transform XML into a readable code.

To ease the process of parsing, some commercial products are available that facilitate
the breakdown of XML document and yield more reliable results.
Some commonly used parsers are listed below:
MSXML (Microsoft Core XML Services) : This is a standard set of XML tools from
Microsoft that includes a parser.

System.Xml.XmlDocument : This class is part of .NET library, which contains

a number of different classes related to working with XML.

62

XML Tutorial

Java built-in parser : The Java library has its own parser. The library is
designed such that you can replace the built-in parser with an external
implementation such as Xerces from Apache or Saxon.

Saxon : Saxon offers tools for parsing, transforming, and querying XML.

Xerces : Xerces is implemented in Java and is developed by the famous open

source Apache Software Foundation.

63

XML Tutorial

XML Processors

When a software program reads an XML document and takes actions accordingly,
this is called processing the XML. Any program that can read and process XML
documents is known as an XML processor. An XML processor reads an XML file and
turns it into in-memory structures that the rest of the program can access.
The most fundamental XML processor reads an XML documents and converts it into
an internal representation for other programs or subroutines to use. This is called
a parser, and it is an important component of every XML processing program.
Processor involves processing the instructions that can be studied in the chapter XML
- Processing Instruction.

Types
XML processors are classified as validating or non-validating types, depending on
whether or not they check XML documents for validity. A processor that discovers a
validity error must be able to report it, but may continue with normal processing.
A few validating parsers are: xml4c (IBM, in C++), xml4j (IBM, in Java), MSXML
(Microsoft, in Java), TclXML (TCL), xmlproc (Python), XML::Parser (Perl), Java Project
X (Sun, in Java).
A few non-validating parsers are: OpenXML (Java), Lark (Java), xp (Java),
AElfred (Java), expat (C), XParse (JavaScript), xmllib (Python).

64