Do you use XML? and why?

[WomenXtra]

Hi All,

I would like to get an idea of XML - why do people use? how? when? examples pleaseeeeee!!

I also wanted to know if you can use it with PHP?

i read a lot of tutorials, found them a bit confusing for someone who is a beginner like me!

ur help and input is appreciated.

thanks
WX

[incrediblehelp]

XML can be great for easily delivering content from one location to another. Sure it can be used in with PHP. I am little confused on why your interested, because you really don't tell us why you want to learn it or use it.

[sacx13]

Read this:
http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_usedfor.asp

XML was designed to describe data. In the real world, computer systems and databases contain data in incompatible formats. One of the most time-consuming challenges for developers has been to exchange data between such systems over the Internet.

Converting the data to XML can greatly reduce this complexity and create data that can be read by many different types of applications.

Since XML data is stored in plain text format, XML provides a software- and hardware-independent way of sharing data.

This makes it much easier to create data that different applications can work with. It also makes it easier to expand or upgrade a system to new operating systems, servers, applications, and new browsers.

Example:
<books>
<book>
<index>1</index>
<title>Title</title>
<author>Author</author>
<category>Category</category>
</book>
<book>
<index>2</index>
<title>Title2</title>
<author>Author2</author>
<category>Category2</category>
</book>
<book>
<index>3</index>
<title>Title3</title>
<author>Author3</author>
<category>Category3</category>
</book>
</books>

[mikesmith76]

A good example of this is RSS feeds. Your visitors can use whatever feed reader they want to read your latest news / posts etc straight from their desktop. The application only needs to know the location of the feed, and nothing of the underlying storage method for these articles