Tags and Simple XML Tutorial

XML Tags continued

XML tags can have multiple attributes:

<a href="index.htm" name="Home" id="001">Home Page</a>

The name of the tag is case-sensitive in XML (but not in HTML).

<a href="index">Home</A>

wouldn't work since the "a" and "/A" are different.

Invalid Characters

Tag names and attribute names can't start with a number or a special character.

<2 /> is invalid

<+guy> is invalid

In fact, some characters should be avoided most of the time when you're naming things in XML and other languages.

You can't have a space in a name:

<my phone numbers> is invalid.

You can't start with a space:

< alpha> is invalid.

Don't use any of the following anywhere in your name:

"$#&()<>?=@%*/|\'

These are usually fine inside attributes or the content of the tag:

<a href="basketball.htm?id=0088">Great Highlights!</a>

XML Documents

XML documents are files that end with the .xml extension. They also start with a document type declaration:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

Here you can see I'm starting the tag with an invalid character, but that means it's a cue for the browser to consider this tag contains programming language information. You wouldn't want to do this normally.

The XML document has one root tag.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<news>
<headlines>CNN</headlines>
<titles>Michael Moore's new film is controversial
</titles>
</news>

In this example, "news" is the root tag. It's the container that all the other tags have to be inside and that's just the way it is.

In XML, tag names and attributes can be anything you want. Try to use descriptive names like those above or this example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<hoops>
 <college>
  <elite8>
   <team city="Lawrence" standings="2">Kansas</team>
    <team city="LaGrange" standings="3">Georgia Tech. </team>
   <team city="Philadelphia" standings="5">St. Joseph's</team>
    <team city="Stillwater" standings="8">Oklahoma St.</team>
   <team city="Durham" standings="1">Duke</team>
   <team city="Cincinatti" standings="4">Xavier</team>
    <team city="Tuscaloosa" standings="5">Alabama</team>
    <team city="New London" standings="8">Connecticut</team>
  </elite8>
  </college>
  <pro>
  </pro>
</hoops>

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