Xml??

[ianmarlowe]

What the heck is XML good for? any practical applications would be enjoyed.

[Alex Vincent]

Oh, how about Mozilla Firefox? The entire user interface is written in XUL (a XML language), XBL (another XML language) and JavaScript.

Generic XML -- that is XML that isn't written in a specific XML language -- is typically only useful as a format for exchanging data.

Try reading this thread, especially near the end: http://www.codingforum.net/showthread.php?t=11642

[hemebond]

It helps to describe data really. For instance you have Docbook which describes a set of XML tags for marking up books and articles. XML is also used by SOAP, a web services format. There is an XML format for RDF, which describes relationships between resources. Try reading XML.com, they should be able to explain it better.

[cf2sg]

It will be the next level of data exchange, the core of some other data type like RSS, atom, etc.

[ianmarlowe]

ok. so, i have a document (info.xml)
this is its content:

<letter>
<to>Bob</to>
<from>Sally</from>
<date>Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005</date>
<content>Paris is nice.  The post office fees are outrageous though!  Call me!</content>
</letter>

How could I insert this bit into an html doc? Why the heck would I want to?

[Alex Vincent]

Why the heck would I want to?

That is the most important question about using XML in any application. I'm not knocking XML. I'm emphasizing that you must have a "need" for XML -- or at least a very strong incentive -- before you should use it.

XML is not the Swiss Army Knife of web development. You, the developer, are. It's up to you to decide if you need to use XML or not, and why.

That said, there's any number of ways you could do it. PHP is one way, if you don't want to do it on the client-side.

[ianmarlowe]

so, let's say i have:

<data>
<name>
Bob Edward Patton
</name>
</data>

how could I turn that information into output? How could I make a script need that information?

[werD]

In ASP
The full code is commented here ..only the first three lines are necessary to load the xml doc though

<%
'This is the xmldom object we are telling the server that we will be working with xml

set xmlDoc=CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")

'this line tells the server not to look for updated versions of this file while it is open
xmlDoc.async="false"

'whatever xml page you wanna load you can change the filename to match yours with a querystring on your redirect statement

xmlDoc.load("mypage.xml")

set x=xmlDoc.getElementsByTagName("Data")
'from now until the last tag

for i = 1 to x.length
If childNode.NodeName="Name" Then
'If its not bob then dont work
If childNode.NodeValue<>"Bob Edward Patterson" Then
 	 'you can either give them a message or redirect them.. 
              'here the message is active  
              Response.Write("Its Not Bob<br>")
              'Response.Redirect("errorpage.asp")  
                Else
             Response.Write(childNode.NodeValue)
 	End If
            Else
 Response.Write("Node Not Found")
End If
Next

%>

[KC-Luck]

We use XML heavily, by using a rigid Schema to validate upon, developers can minimize the amount of syntax required to render multiple output formats for our multimedia applications.