Overview

This in-depth course is designed to thoroughly familiarise web developers with the structure of XML and the transformation and display of XML data using XSLT stylesheets as well as the use of DTDs and XML schema documents for validation.

Course Outline

Basics

What is XML, XML and HTML, XML and web development , Creating XML tags, XML elements, The root element, Parent and child elements, Entities, PCData, and CData, Element attributes, White space, Adding comments, Well-formed XML documents

The XML DOM

What is the XML DOM, The Node Interface Model, Parsing the DOM, Parse errors, Manipulating XML elements, XML DOM Objects

DTDs

Overview of XML validation, XML parsers, Creating DTDs, Internal and external DTDs, Element declaration, Attribute declaration, Declaring internal entities, Declaring external entities

Schemas

When to use XML schema, Schemas and DTDs compared, Schema element and attributes, Declaring simple elements, Declaring attributes, Defining complex elements, Complex empty elements, Complex text-only elements, Mixed complex elements, String, date, numeric data types

Namespaces

Overview of namespaces, The Namespace attribute, Uniform Resource Identifiers, Defining default namespaces

Extending XML

Overview of XSL, XSLT and XPath, The transformation process, Declaring an XSL style sheet, XSL templates, XSLT elements, XPath syntax, XPath expressions, XPath functions, Node functions, Numeric functions , String functions

SOAP

Introduction to SOAP, SOAP elements, The Envelope element, The Header element, The Body element, SOAP namespaces, SOAP attributes