1.

Introduction to XML

XML:
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.

Characteristics of XML:
• 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:

• 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 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.

1 Prepared By:
Prof. Chirag Prajapati – SDJ International College, Vesu, Surat
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 instruct the computer to perform specific tasks. XML does not qualify to be
a programming language as it does not 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.

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Prof. Chirag Prajapati – SDJ International College, Vesu, Surat
XML - Syntax:
The following diagram depicts the syntax rules to write different types of markup
and text in an XML document.

XML Declaration

The XML document can optionally have an XML declaration. It is written as follows −

<?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.

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

Tags and Elements

An XML file is structured by several XML-elements also called XML-nodes or XML-tags. The
names of XML-elements are enclosed in triangular brackets < > as shown below −

<element>

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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.

The Following example shows incorrect nested tags −

<?xml version = "1.0"?>

<contact-info>

<company>Google

</contact-info>

</company>

The Following example shows correct nested tags −

<?xml version = "1.0"?>

<contact-info>

<company> Google </company>

</contact-info>

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>
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 <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>

XML 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 syntax. The following example shows
incorrect syntax because the attribute b is specified twice

<a b = "x" c = "y" b = "z">....</a>

• 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.

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 • 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 UTF-8 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 −

Not Allowed Character Replacement Entity Character Description

< &lt; less than

> &gt; greater than

& &amp; ampersand

' &apos; apostrophe

" &quot; quotation mark

XML – Documents
An XML document can contains wide variety of data. For example, database of
numbers, numbers representing molecular structure or a mathematical equation.

A simple document is shown in the following example −

<?xml version = "1.0"?>

<contact-info>

<name>Tanmay Patil</name>

<company>TutorialsPoint</company>

<phone>(011) 123-4567</phone>

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</contact-info>

The following image depicts the parts of XML document.

Document Prolog Section

Document Prolog comes at the top of the document, before the root element. This
section contains −

• XML declaration

• Document type 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.

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

Syntax

Following syntax shows XML declaration −

<?xml

version = "version_number"

encoding = "encoding_declaration"

standalone = "standalone_status"
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?>

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

Specifies the version of the XML standard

Version 1.0
used.

UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-

10646-UCS-2, ISO-10646-
It defines the character encoding used in the
Encoding UCS-4, ISO-8859-1 to
document. UTF-8 is the default encoding used.
ISO-8859-9, ISO-2022-JP,
Shift_JIS, EUC-JP

It informs the parser whether the document

relies on the information from an external
source, such as external document type
Standalone yes or no 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.

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

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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' ?>

9 Prepared By:
Prof. Chirag Prajapati – SDJ International College, Vesu, Surat