- Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days, Third Edition
- Table of Contents
- About the Author
- Acknowledgments
- We Want to Hear from You!
- Introduction
- Part I: At a Glance
- Day 1. Welcome to XML
- All About Markup Languages
- All About XML
- Looking at XML in a Browser
- Working with XML Data Yourself
- Structuring Your Data
- Creating Well-Formed XML Documents
- Creating Valid XML Documents
- How XML Is Used in the Real World
- Online XML Resources
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 2. Creating XML Documents
- Choosing an XML Editor
- Using XML Browsers
- Using XML Validators
- Creating XML Documents Piece by Piece
- Creating Prologs
- Creating an XML Declaration
- Creating XML Comments
- Creating Processing Instructions
- Creating Tags and Elements
- Creating CDATA Sections
- Handling Entities
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 3. Creating Well-Formed XML Documents
- What Makes an XML Document Well-Formed?
- Creating an Example XML Document
- Understanding the Well-Formedness Constraints
- Using XML Namespaces
- Understanding XML Infosets
- Understanding Canonical XML
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 4. Creating Valid XML Documents: DTDs
- All About DTDs
- Validating a Document by Using a DTD
- Creating Element Content Models
- Commenting a DTD
- Supporting External DTDs
- Handling Namespaces in DTDs
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Declaring Attributes in DTDs
- Day 5. Handling Attributes and Entities in DTDs
- Specifying Default Values
- Specifying Attribute Types
- Handling Entities
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 6. Creating Valid XML Documents: XML Schemas
- Using XML Schema Tools
- Creating XML Schemas
- Dissecting an XML Schema
- The Built-in XML Schema Elements
- Creating Elements and Types
- Specifying a Number of Elements
- Specifying Element Default Values
- Creating Attributes
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 7. Creating Types in XML Schemas
- Restricting Simple Types by Using XML Schema Facets
- Creating XML Schema Choices
- Using Anonymous Type Definitions
- Declaring Empty Elements
- Declaring Mixed-Content Elements
- Grouping Elements Together
- Grouping Attributes Together
- Declaring all Groups
- Handling Namespaces in Schemas
- Annotating an XML Schema
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Part I. In Review
- Well-Formed Documents
- Valid Documents
- Part II: At a Glance
- Day 8. Formatting XML by Using Cascading Style Sheets
- Our Sample XML Document
- Introducing CSS
- Connecting CSS Style Sheets and XML Documents
- Creating Style Sheet Selectors
- Using Inline Styles
- Creating Style Rule Specifications in Style Sheets
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 9. Formatting XML by Using XSLT
- Introducing XSLT
- Transforming XML by Using XSLT
- Writing XSLT Style Sheets
- Using <xsl:apply-templates>
- Using <xsl:value-of> and <xsl:for-each>
- Matching Nodes by Using the match Attribute
- Working with the select Attribute and XPath
- Using <xsl:copy>
- Using <xsl:if>
- Using <xsl:choose>
- Specifying the Output Document Type
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 10. Working with XSL Formatting Objects
- Introducing XSL-FO
- Using XSL-FO
- Using XSL Formatting Objects and Properties
- Building an XSL-FO Document
- Handling Inline Formatting
- Formatting Lists
- Formatting Tables
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Part II. In Review
- Using CSS
- Using XSLT
- Using XSL-FO
- Part III: At a Glance
- Day 11. Extending HTML with XHTML
- Why XHTML?
- Writing XHTML Documents
- Validating XHTML Documents
- The Basic XHTML Elements
- Organizing Text
- Formatting Text
- Selecting Fonts: <font>
- Comments: <!-->
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 12. Putting XHTML to Work
- Creating Hyperlinks: <a>
- Linking to Other Documents: <link>
- Handling Images: <img>
- Creating Frame Documents: <frameset>
- Creating Frames: <frame>
- Creating Embedded Style Sheets: <style>
- Formatting Tables: <table>
- Creating Table Rows: <tr>
- Formatting Table Headers: <th>
- Formatting Table Data: <td>
- Extending XHTML
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 13. Creating Graphics and Multimedia: SVG and SMIL
- Introducing SVG
- Creating an SVG Document
- Creating Rectangles
- Adobe's SVG Viewer
- Using CSS Styles
- Creating Circles
- Creating Ellipses
- Creating Lines
- Creating Polylines
- Creating Polygons
- Creating Text
- Creating Gradients
- Creating Paths
- Creating Text Paths
- Creating Groups and Transformations
- Creating Animation
- Creating Links
- Creating Scripts
- Embedding SVG in HTML
- Introducing SMIL
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 14. Handling XLinks, XPointers, and XForms
- Introducing XLinks
- Beyond Simple XLinks
- Introducing XPointers
- Introducing XBase
- Introducing XForms
- Summary
- Workshop
- Part III. In Review
- Part IV: At a Glance
- Day 15. Using JavaScript and XML
- Introducing the W3C DOM
- Introducing the DOM Objects
- Working with the XML DOM in JavaScript
- Searching for Elements by Name
- Reading Attribute Values
- Getting All XML Data from a Document
- Validating XML Documents by Using DTDs
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 16. Using Java and .NET: DOM
- Using Java to Read XML Data
- Finding Elements by Name
- Creating an XML Browser by Using Java
- Navigating Through XML Documents
- Writing XML by Using Java
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 17. Using Java and .NET: SAX
- An Overview of SAX
- Using SAX
- Using SAX to Find Elements by Name
- Creating an XML Browser by Using Java and SAX
- Navigating Through XML Documents by Using SAX
- Writing XML by Using Java and SAX
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 18. Working with SOAP and RDF
- Introducing SOAP
- A SOAP Example in .NET
- A SOAP Example in Java
- Introducing RDF
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Part IV. In Review
- Part V: At a Glance
- Day 19. Handling XML Data Binding
- Introducing DSOs
- Binding HTML Elements to HTML Data
- Binding HTML Elements to XML Data
- Binding HTML Tables to XML Data
- Accessing Individual Data Fields
- Binding HTML Elements to XML Data by Using the XML DSO
- Binding HTML Tables to XML Data by Using the XML DSO
- Searching XML Data by Using a DSO and JavaScript
- Handling Hierarchical XML Data
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 20. Working with XML and Databases
- XML, Databases, and ASP
- Storing Databases as XML
- Using XPath with a Database
- Introducing XQuery
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 21. Handling XML in .NET
- Creating and Editing an XML Document in .NET
- From XML to Databases and Back
- Reading and Writing XML in .NET Code
- Using XML Controls to Display Formatted XML
- Creating XML Web Services
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Part V. In Review
- Appendix A. Quiz Answers
- Quiz Answers for Day 1
- Quiz Answers for Day 2
- Quiz Answers for Day 3
- Quiz Answers for Day 4
- Quiz Answers for Day 5
- Quiz Answers for Day 6
- Quiz Answers for Day 7
- Quiz Answers for Day 8
- Quiz Answers for Day 9
- Quiz Answers for Day 10
- Quiz Answers for Day 11
- Quiz Answers for Day 12
- Quiz Answers for Day 13
- Quiz Answers for Day 14
- Quiz Answers for Day 15
- Quiz Answers for Day 16
- Quiz Answers for Day 17
- Quiz Answers for Day 18
- Quiz Answers for Day 19
- Quiz Answers for Day 20
- Quiz Answers for Day 21
Recommended Book
Recommended Book
Recommended Book
Looking at XML in a Browser
Some browsers, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer version 5 or later, let you display XML documents directly. For example, if you download the code for this book, you can browse to ch01_02.xml in Internet Explorer, as you see in Figure 1.2. As you see in the figure, the whole XML document we've created is displayed. You can even click the – sign in front of the <document> element to collapse all the contents of that element into a single line (which will have a + sign in front of it, indicating that that line may be expanded). In this way, you can display a raw XML document in Internet Explorer.
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Figure 1.2 Viewing an XML document in Internet Explorer.
Note, however, that Internet Explorer hasn't done anything more than display our raw XML here—it hasn't interpreted that XML in any way, because browsers are specialists at displaying data, not interpreting XML tags.
In fact, if you're only interested in displaying your data, you can use your XML tags to tell the browser how to do that by using style sheets. For example, you might want to create an element named <red> that specifies to the browser that all enclosed text should be displayed in red. Using style sheets, you can let a browser interpret your XML if you just want to use that XML to tell a browser how to display your data visually.
There's plenty of support for working with XML documents and style sheets in both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. There are two kinds of style sheets you can use with XML documents—cascading style sheets (CSS), which you can also use with HTML documents, and Extensible Stylesheet Language style sheets (XSL), designed to be used only with XML documents.
We'll cover both CSS and XSL in this book (see Days 8–10), but you'll also get an idea of what you can do using style sheets today. As an example, we'll use CSS to format our XML sample document. To do that, we'll use an XML processing instruction, <?xml-stylesheet?>, supported by both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, to associate a CSS style sheet with an XML document.
As you can guess from their name, processing instructions are instructions to the software processing the XML; all XML processing instructions like this one start with <? and end with ?>. Processing instructions might appear throughout an XML document, and like XML elements themselves, they may have attributes. As with XML elements, you're free to make up your own processing instructions—the <?xml-stylesheet?> processing instruction is not built into XML, it just happens to be one supported by both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer. More on processing instructions tomorrow.
In this case, this processing instruction will have its type attribute set to "text/css" to indicate that we're using a CSS style sheet, and its href attribute set to the location of the CSS style sheet (much like the way the href attribute of an HTML <a> element specifies the target of a hyperlink), as you see in ch01_03.xml in Listing 1.3.
Example 1.3. An XML Document Using a Style Sheet (ch01_03.xml)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="ch01_04.css"?>
<document>
<heading>
Hello From XML
</heading>
<message>
This is an XML document!
</message>
</document>
In this case, we've named the CSS style sheet ch01_04.css, and you can see the entire contents of this file in Listing 1.4. In ch01_04.css, we're telling the browser how to display our XML elements' content. In particular, we're saying that we want the text content of <heading> elements to appear centered in the browser, 24 points high (a point is 1/72 of an inch), and colored red (you specify colors as you would in an HTML page—#ff0000 is bright red, for example; more on setting colors like these when we discuss CSS in detail in Day 8, "Formatting XML with Cascading Style Sheets"), and the text content of <message> elements in centered 18 point blue text.
Example 1.4. A CSS Style Sheet (ch01_04.css)
heading {display: block; font-size: 24pt; color: #ff0000; text-align: center}
message {display: block; font-size: 18pt; color: #0000ff; text-align: center}
You can see the results in Netscape Navigator in Figure 1.3, and in Internet Explorer in Figure 1.4. In this way, we've been able to tell a browser how we want our data formatted, using XML elements to format that data, and a style sheet to tell the browser how to interpret those XML elements.
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Figure 1.3 Viewing an XML document in Netscape Navigator.
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Figure 1.4 Viewing an XML document in Internet Explorer.
That's about as far as a browser can go with XML unless you do more yourself. However, using XML to indicate how your data should be displayed is only the beginning. You can extract data from an XML document yourself, and we'll see how to do that in detail toward the end of this book. For example, you might use a scripting language like JavaScript to tell a browser how to extract data from the elements in an XML document, and we'll take a look at how that might work next.