XML - Revealed

[JuniorOnline]

Hi All,

I can't seem to find a simple tutorial that explains how XML is actually used? All i can find is information about:

- displaying xml with css
- displaying xml with xsl

but what I dont understand is, what sort of requirements are needed by my hosting company to enable me to run the XML on the server? or if there is a certain software i need to use to compile the code?


my questions my sound stupied, but I am a little lost in understanding how to run XML and what to use it for?

thanks alot for anyone trying to shed some light on this..

thanks,
T

[mikesmith76]

Hi

First of all XML is NOT a programming language, it's a markup language. It's purpose is to define the structure of data. One example use would be an RSS feed, this is an xml encoded document containing news articles (for example).

XSL on the other hand is a programming language (XSL stands for extensible Markup Language). It can be used for extracting information from an XML document, converting between XML document types and as you can see with RSS feeds displaying the XML in a HTML document.

When an XSL stylesheet is run it is run in the client's web browser, therefore no requirement on the server. Creating an XML document is similar to writing an ordinary text file, you just need to get the XML markup right. There are ways to parse / run stylesheets on the server but this is dependant on the programming language being used, and what you are trying to do.

Just incase you have never seen an XML document before here is an example of what one looks like (a fragment anyway):

<person>
 <name>Mike</name>
 <age>23</age>
 <location>Manchester</location
</person>

As you can see the XML markup just seperates the data into meaningful sections. If you need any more info pm me and I'll see if I can help

Mike