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- 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
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Using CSS
CSS lets you format the visual appearance of HTML and CSS by using style sheets. Style sheets are collections of style rules, and each rule shows how to format an XML element. A rule is made up of a selector, which is the element or elements you want to format, and the rule specification, which shows the format you want.
There are a number of ways of creating selectors. For example, you can list an XML element by name, you can create style classes, you can select elements by ID value, and so on.
The second part of a rule, the rule specification, is made up of CSS property/value pairs in a semicolon-separated list, surrounded by curly braces. Many CSS properties are available, such as text-align, text-decoration, and so forth. You can assign values to those properties by listing those values after a property name, like this, in a rule specification:
{text-align: center; text-decoration: underline}
You saw in Part II that you can create block-level elements by using the CSS display property when you assign the value block to it. Block elements are displayed on their own lines. If you don't make an element a block element, it will be an inline element by default; inline elements are arranged by the browser following the normal flow of items that the browser displays.
In Part II you took a look at various text properties, such as those for selecting fonts, font size, font weight, text alignment, indentation, and decoration. And you also saw how to specify colors, backgrounds, and borders and even how to display images. CSS is also good at positioning elements, in both absolute and relative terms.
There are various ways to connect a CSS to an XML document. The most usual in XML documents is by using the <?xml-stylesheet?> processing instruction. This example ties an XML document to a CSS by using that processing instruction:
<?xml version="1.0" standalone="yes"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="dickens.css"?>
<document>
<title>Bleak House</title>
<author>Charles Dickens</author>
<chapter>1</chapter>
<paragraph>
London. Michaelmas term lately over, and the Lord Chancellor sitting in
Lincoln's Inn Hall. Implacable November weather. As much mud in the streets
as if the waters had but newly retired from the face of the earth, and it
would not be wonderful to meet a Megalosaurus, forty feet long or so,
waddling like an elephantine lizard up Holborn Hill. Smoke lowering down
from chimney-pots, making a soft black drizzle, with flakes of soot in it
as big as full-grown snowflakes—gone into mourning, one might imagine, for
the death of the sun. Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better;
splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's
umbrellas in a general infection of ill temper, and losing their foot-hold
at street-corners, where tens of thousands of other foot passengers have been
slipping and sliding since the day broke (if this day ever broke), adding new
deposits to the crust upon crust of mud, sticking at those points tenaciously
to the pavement, and accumulating at compound interest.
</paragraph>
<paragraph>
Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows;
fog down the river, where it rolls deified among the tiers of shipping and the
waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes,
fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs;
fog lying out on the yards and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog
drooping on the gunwales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats
of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog
in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his
close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little
'prentice boy on deck. Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets
into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up in a
balloon and hanging in the misty clouds.
</paragraph>
<paragraph>
Gas looming through the fog in divers places in the streets, much as the sun
may, from the spongey fields, be seen to loom by husbandman and ploughboy.
Most of the shops lighted two hours before their time—as the gas seems to
know, for it has a haggard and unwilling look.
</paragraph>
</document>
Here's an example of a style sheet, dickens.css, that specifies exactly how to format each of the various elements in the XML document by using one style rule for each element type:
title {display: block; font-size: 36pt; font-weight: bold;
text-align: center; text-decoration: underline}
author {display: block; font-size: 16pt;
text-align: center}
chapter {display: block; font-size: 28pt; text-align: center;
font-style: italic}
paragraph {display: block; margin-top: 10}