When you create your company’s website , you are creating a digital representation of your business. The design, images, text, and other elements that make up the website are part of a reading set that machines interpret to show your customers the site as it is. XML is part of this set .
If you want to know what it is, what its main functions are and how to open this type of file, stay with us until the end of this post!
What is XML?
XML is an acronym for Extensible turkey telegram data Markup Language, which defines a set of rules for encoding documents . Sounds complicated? Let’s simplify it.
Markup language is a set of codes that can be applied in data analysis or reading texts created by computers or humans. XML language provides a platform to define elements to create a format and generate a custom language.
An XML file is divided into two parts: prolog and body . The prolog part consists of administrative metadata, such as XML declaration, optional processing instruction, document type declaration and comments. The body part consists of two parts: structural and content (present in plain texts).
XML design focuses on simplicity, generality, and ease of use, and is therefore used for a number of web services. So much so that there are systems aimed at assisting in the definition of XML-based languages, as well as APIs that assist in the processing of XML data – not to be confused with HTML.
What is HTML?
HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) is the nuances of checking a word or phrase using the document markup language for building web pages . Therefore, the formatting commands used in web content refer to the structure of the content and the layout that will be displayed in the browser.
That is, browsers read the document in HTML format and process it on the screen by examining the HTML elements inserted in the document, which is considered a text file with the information to be published.
Therefore, we can generate an HTML file using Notepad on our computer, for example.
Embedded instructions are known as elements that show the structure and presentation of the document in the browser. These elements are made up of tags that define the format of a text. Tags usually exist twice: start tag and end tag. For example, to make the text bold, the <strong> tags are used at the beginning and </ strong> at the end.
And what are the differences between XML and HTML?
To make it clear what distinguishes one dv leads from the other, here we list the main differences between XML and HTML:
- XML is a text-based markup language that has a self-describing structure and can effectively define another markup language. On the other hand, HTML is a predefined markup language and has limited capabilities;
- XML provides the logical structure of the document, while the structure of HTML is predefined, using heads and body tags ;
- When it comes to language, HTML is case insensitive. XML, on the other hand, is case sensitive;
- HTML was designed with an emphasis on the presentation characteristics of data . In contrast, XML is data-specific;
- XML does not allow any errors in code . In contrast, in HTML, small errors can be neglected;
- Whitespace in XML is used for a specific purpose, as HTML considers all characters, whereas it can ignore whitespace;
- XML tags are necessarily closed , while in HTML an open tag can also work quite well;
- In XML, syntax is of great importance. HTML, on the other hand, does not care much about this aspect.
What are XML features?
Now, we will see the main characteristics and advantages of XML:
XML separates data from HTML
If you need to display dynamic data in your HTML document, you’ll have to put in a lot of work editing it every time the data changes. With XML, data can be stored in separate XML files . That way, you can use HTML for both display and layout.
With a few lines of JavaScript code, you can read an external XML file and update the data content of your web page .
XML simplifies data exchange
Both computer systems and databases contain information in incompatible formats.
XML data is stored in plain text format, which gives us a stand-alone way of storing data. This makes it much easier to create data that can be shared across different applications.
XML simplifies data exchange
One of the most difficult challenges for developers is exchanging data between incompatible systems over the Internet. Data exchange such as XML greatly reduces this complexity because the data can be read by different, incompatible applications.
XML simplifies platform switching
Upgrading to new systems (hardware or software platforms) is time-consuming. Large amounts of data must be converted and incompatible data is often lost.
XML data is stored in text format. This makes it easy to expand or upgrade to new information systems, new applications, or new browsers without data loss.
XML increases data availability
Different applications can access your data, not only in HTML pages, but also in XML data sources.
With XML, your data can be made available to all types of “reading machines” (handheld computers, voice machines, news feeds, etc.) and it also makes it easier for people with different abilities, such as the blind .
XML can be used to create new Internet languages
Many new languages on the Internet are created with XML. Here are some examples:
- XHTML;
- WSDL;
- WAP and WML;
- RSS (used in news);
- RDF and OWL;
- SMIL.
How to open XML files?
Although there are readers for this type of file, such as XML Explorer , here we show you 3 ways to open XML files on your computer.
With notepad (text document)
Since XML files are encoded with plain text, you can open Notepad (on Windows) or a text editor (on Mac), click “File” and then “Open”.
At the top you will see the information <? xml version = “1.0” encoding = “UTF-8”?> revealing that the content is in XML format.
Tags are used to store pieces of data. Note that some tags can be contained within other tags, creating a “tag tree”. For example, to create a bold heading Tag 2 , the form is: <h2> <strong>TITLE</ h2>
Using a browser
Right-click the XML file saved on your computer and choose “Open with” and then choose your browser to open the file.
In this case, you cannot edit the document. On the other hand, you will be able to see it more clearly than in Notepad , since the browser uses several colors to display the document in text format.
