Introduction to XML

Outcomes By the end of this course, you will be able to ? Write an entire XML document that passes the tests for correct format and structure ? Describe the forces driving the XML revolution. ? Describe the relationship between your XML document, its structural model, and its stylesheet. ? Describe the way your XML document passes through various software gates, moving from you to the user. ? Explain the role of the XML parser, and the user?s browser, in interpreting your XML document. ? Create a full prolog to an XML document ? Read and write XML tags for elements, attributes, entity references, comments, processing instructions, and other components of an XML document. ? Spot problems with incorrect XML tagging, and make corrections. ? Ensure that your document is well formed. ? Ensure that your XML document has a valid structure. Assessment You will be graded on challenges in each lesson. Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 In this lesson, you explore the idea of tags. You?ll learn the benefits of marking up a Web document with tags identifying content and structure. To get a little background, you?ll see how the extensible Markup Language?the machine that lets you create new sets of tags?grew out of the gigantic but unwieldy Standard General Markup Language, to overcome many limitations of the HyperText Markup Language. You will discover how e-commerce is driving industry to adopt XML as a standard for every piece of content you create?stored in object-oriented databases, published through content management software, customized, personalized, syndicated, and reassembled on the fly for use on personal and corporate computers. And you?ll get a sense of the way using XML tags will transform the way you think about the information you are going to publish on the Web. By focusing your attention on structure and purpose, XML will change the way you write prose. You start creating an XML document. You learn how a program called a parser will review your tags to see if you?ve inserted them correctly; if so, the parser will declare your document ?well formed,? and pass it along to the user?s Web browser, for display. (If the parser disapproves of your tagging, the document is not passed along to the browser?one of the reasons we must learn to tag right). In this lesson, you begin to create a well-formed prolog?the first part of an XML document, describing it to the parser, and, perhaps, a few other humans. You soak up the basics of XML tagging, and create comments, processing instructions, and an XML declaration. You learn why you often use a prolog at the start of your XML document to point to another document that describes the ideal structure for all documents of this type, and, perhaps, a stylesheet describing how this document will be formatted. You declare what type of document this will be, so the parser can later check to make sure the structure matches the standard published separately in a file called a Document Type Definition or Schema. You also learn how to tell the browser what stylesheet to use when formatting the XML document. Now you have completed the prolog to your XML document, and you?re ready to write the actual content. In this lesson, you write the body of the XML document. You organize your content into a standard structure, using XML tags to indicate each component in that hierarchy. You are creating the most important components of your document?the elements of content. You are surrounding raw content with starting and ending tags, writing the name of the element correctly, and, finally, entering the content itself. You learn to start off with a root element, at the top of the hierarchy, and work your way down, guided by the standard model for this type of document, nesting elements within elements, until you reach the end, and close your document. If XML elements are the nouns, then their attributes are adjectives, because they describe the content. Attributes let software manipulate the content, sorting it, reorganizing it, formatting it, or transforming it on the fly. You?ll learn how to name an element?s attributes, and give their values. To round out your well-formed XML document, you?ll learn to use entity references to work around the problem you face when the name of an element or attribute happens to include a character that the parser would otherwise believe indicated that a new tag might be starting. You?ll see how to tag information that should not be sent through the parser, because it contains too many of these restricted characters, or because you want it left as it stands. Most important, you will create an entire XML document starting with raw content, and a set of elements, with their attributes, plus comments, processing instructions, and entity references. This final project will allow you to show off your XML tagging skills in your portfolio. Contact Hours: 30