XML Tutorial

XML is a text format for storing and sending data in a structured way that both people and programs can read.

XML is everywhere, even if you do not see it: website sitemaps, RSS news feeds, Android app layouts, Microsoft Word and Excel files, bank and government data exchanges all use XML.

Why Learn XML?

• It is easy to read: data sits inside tags you name yourself
• It works with every programming language
• Many systems and APIs still exchange data as XML
• It helps you understand sitemaps, RSS feeds, SVG images and configuration files

What You Will Learn

• What XML is and how it differs from HTML
• The syntax rules that make a document "well-formed"
• Elements, attributes and when to use each
• Namespaces for mixing XML vocabularies
• Validating documents with DTD and XML Schema
• Finding data with XPath
• Reading XML with JavaScript and Python, and real uses like sitemaps

A First Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<student>
  <name>Ayesha Khan</name>
  <course>Web Development</course>
  <city>Karachi</city>
</student>

Even without any explanation, you can understand this data. That is the main strength of XML.

Exercises and Quiz

Each lesson ends with an exercise, and the last lesson is a quiz on the whole tutorial.

Related Tutorials

Knowing HTML makes XML very easy to learn. Next, learn JavaScript or Python to process XML data, and PHP or Django to produce XML from a website.