Introduction to XML Development — A 3-day course

Introduction to XML development

• Objectives
• What is XML?
• Quick example
• Key benefits of XML
• What is a markup language?
• SGML: some history
• Relationship of SGML to XML
• Evolution of XML
• Why is XML important?
• Uses for XML
• Quick example — revisited
• Modelling data
• Elements
• Attributes
• Nesting elements
• Structure of a document
• The <?xml…?> declaration
• What are web services?
• Benefits of web services
• Current status

XHTML

• What is it?
• Motivation behind XHTML
• Example document
• XHTML standards
• Differences between HTML and XHTML
• Writing XHTML for older browsers
• Including scripts and stylesheets
• Advantages of XHTML

Well-formed XML documents

• Objectives
• Valid versus well-formed XML
• Well-formed XML documents
• Valid XML documents
• Recap basic terms
• Element naming rules
• Attributes
• Comments
• XML declaration
• Processing instructions
• Non-permissible characters
• Errors and fatal errors

XML namespaces

• Objectives
• Need for namespaces
• Problem: same names different concepts
• Solution: group names in namespaces
• Problem: ensuring unique namespaces
• Using basic XML namespaces
• Example: basic XML namespaces
• Default namespaces
• Example: default namespaces
• Default namespaces: inheritance and cancellation
• Example: namespace inheritance
• Different namespace notation
• Attributes and namespaces
• Extending XML
• Namespaces and DTDs
• The use of URLs in namespaces

An introduction to XML schemas

• Objectives
• The principle of schemas
• The place of DTDs
• Writing a schema
• Example: simple memo format
• Example: schema for <memo> documents
• Sequences of elements
• <sequence>
• Complex and simple types
• Defining attributes
• Simple types
• <attribute use=> values
• Tying documents to schemas
• Instance documents which use namespaces
• Schema processing tools
• Authoring tools
• XML parsers with schema support
• Other tools supporting schemas
• Web resources

Valid XML with Document Type Definitions (DTDs)

• Objectives
• Goals of DTDs
• Schemas and DTDs: differences
• Validation
• Example: the memo format
• Example: DTD for memos
• The document type declaration
• The PUBLIC source specifier
• The SYSTEM source specifier
• Declaring entities
• Entities jargon
• Declaring elements
• Declaring empty elements
• The ANY content model
• #PCDATA content
• Elements which contain elements
• Optional elements
• Repeated elements
• Repeated elements (continued)
• Mixed content
• Declaring attributes
• Attribute types
• Adding per-document entities
• Limitations of DTDs

Principles of styling XML

• Objectives
• What is styling?
• Styling XML
• CSS
• Using CSS with XML
• XSL
• Putting XSL together
• XSLT
• XSL-FO
• Associating style sheets with XML documents
• The <?xml-stylesheet?> processing instruction
• Convergence between CSS and XSL-FO

Using cascading stylesheets with XML

• Objectives
• CSS introduction
• CSS in HTML
• CSS in XML
• Using CSS with XML

A brief introduction to XSLT

• Why transforming XML is useful
• Business to business transactions
• XSLT for transforming XML
• Disadvantages of XSLT
• Available software
• Using XT
• Different kinds of XSLT processors
• XSLT and XSL-FO for presentation
• Example: simplified syntax
• Input and output of stylesheet
• Example: name of root element
• Non-simplified syntax
• How stylesheet processing works
• Empty stylesheets
• Input and output of empty stylesheet
• Getting values from the input
• Example: getting a value from the input
• select="…" expressions
• What is XPath?
• Accessing the values of attributes

Further XSLT

• Example: inserting static text
• Copying elements unchanged
• Example: renaming an element
• Example: removing an element
• Conditionally including output
• Example: conditional templates
• Example: counting elements
• Inserting text into the output
• Example: explicitly inserting text
• Example: listing elements
• Current node in a template
• Example: simple arithmetic
• Example: listing URLs from links
• Example: looping
• Example: sorting

XSLT details

• Root node
• XPath expression syntax
• Template matching with XPath
• Applying templates
• Building location paths with XPath
• Predicates
• Using XPath in XML
• XPath numeric functions
• XPath's string functions
• Axes: heading in other directions
• Changing case with translate
• XPath summary
• Choosing among alternatives
• Example of <xsl:choose>
• Whitespace stripping
• Calling templates by name
• Passing parameters to templates
• Example: changing newlines to <br/>
• Structuring stylesheets

XSL-FO

• Objectives
• What is XSL-FO?
• XSL-FO basics
• Processing XSL-FO
• Internationalisation
• Simple page layout
• Real page layout
• XSL-FO page layout jargon
• More jargon: regions
• Creating pages
• A simple example
• A simple example (continued)
• Static content
• XSL-FO and XSLT
• XSL-FO and XSLT (continued)
• XSLT example
• Other features
• Tables
• Inheritance
• The future

Processing XML

• Objectives
• Reasons for processing
• How to process XML
• Choosing a processing method
• General XML processing with XSLT
• XML parser types
• Event-based parsing
• Tree-based parsing

Processing XML events with SAX

• Objectives
• SAX — the simple API for XML
• Event-based programming with SAX
• Typical steps in using SAX
• Capturing element events
• Example of a ContentHandler
• Start and end of documents
• Capturing character data
• Example: totalling prices in an invoice
• Example: continued
• Positions of elements
• Extensions to SAX

Processing XML objects with DOM

• What is the DOM?
• DOM level 1 object model
• The XML DOM
• DOM's relationship to applications
• DOM interfaces
• Document representation by DOM
• The DOM core
• The DOM core interfaces
• Interfaces provided by the DOM core
• DOM core interfaces (contd.)
• Using the DOM in Java
• Example: print href values of <a>s
• Catching validation errors
• Error handlers in an anonymous inner class
• The future of DOM