- 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
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Introducing CSS
CSS has been standardized by the W3C, and as of this writing, there are three levels of CSS available: CSS1, CSS2, and CSS3. You can find the W3C recommendations for CSS1 and CSS2 at http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS1 and http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-CSS2. CSS3 is still under development; it's broken up into many modules, and at this point those modules are at various stages of acceptance, from working drafts to candidate recommendations. You can find more about the many CSS3 modules at http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS/current-work. There are also many CSS resources available at the W3C CSS page, http://www.w3.org/Style/CSS, including CSS tutorials and links to free tools.
Today you'll be dealing almost exclusively with CSS1 because it gives you all you need in order to present XML documents. CSS2 includes some changes compared to CSS1, but its main thrust is in providing extra features, such as aural stylesheets for sounds and so on; CSS3 is still under development. Support for CSS1 in both Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer is good—in fact, Internet Explorer supports all of CSS1 (and that was true as of March 27, 2000, when Internet Explorer 5.0 shipped). One notable aspect of CSS2 that you're going to use today is its support for formatting tables.
Formatting using CSS revolves around using style sheets. Style sheets are collections of style rules, each of which shows how to format an XML element. For example, say that you want to specify how to format the text in the <title> element in the ch08_01.xml sample XML document shown in Listing 8.1. How could you construct a style rule to do that? A rule is made up of a selector, which is the element(s) you want to format, and the rule specification, which shows what formatting you want to apply. Here's how a rule might look if you wanted to format the text in the <title> element in bold, centered, underlined 36-point font (a point is 1/72 inch):
title {display: block; font-size: 36pt; font-weight: bold;
text-align: center; text-decoration: underline}
Note that the rule specification is enclosed in curly braces, { and }. In this rule, title is the selector and {display: block; font-size: 36pt; font-weight: bold; text-align: center; text-decoration: underline} is the rule specification. display, font-size, font-weight, and so on are CSS properties, and you're going to see a great many of those properties today. In fact, getting to know CSS largely means getting to know what properties, like these, are available. The second part of today's discussion is devoted to the various CSS properties and what they do for you.
Rule specifications are made up of property/value pairs, such as display: block, separated with semicolons, as you'll see when you write your own style sheets. The display: block property/value pair is a particularly important one because it gives the element you're formatting its own line in the display, creating a block-level element, just as the <H1> element in HTML is a block-level element. You'll talk more about this in a few pages.
Listing 8.2 shows a CSS style sheet that handles all four of the element types that are in the sample XML document—<title>, <philosopher>, <book>, and <paragraph>. Note that CSS style sheet files use the extension .css.
Example 8.2. A CSS Document (ch08_02.css)
title {display: block; font-size: 36pt; font-weight: bold;
text-align: center; text-decoration: underline}
philosopher {display: block; font-size: 16pt;
text-align: center}
book {display: block; font-size: 28pt; text-align: center;
font-style: italic}
paragraph {display: block; margin-top: 10}
You're going to be writing style sheets of the kind shown in Listing 8.2 throughout today's discussion. Style sheets don't look much like XML documents, but, as with XML, there are a few CSS validators available on the Web to help you check your CSS. Here are two of them:
- The W3C CSS validator, at http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator, checks the CSS in your pages for you.
- The W3C TIDY program can convert styles in HTML documents to CSS for you. TIDY is available at http://tidy.sourceforge.net.
The next step is to connect the CSS style sheet, ch08_02.css, to the XML document, ch08_01.xml.