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Xml Elements

📅 2026-06-13 | 📂 XML
```html XML Elements

XML Elements

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XML Elements

XML documents contain XML elements.

What is an XML Element?

An XML element refers to everything from (and including) the start tag to (and including) the end tag.

An element can contain:

  • Other elements
  • Text
  • Attributes
  • Mixtures of all the above...
<bookstore>
    <book category="CHILDREN">
        <title>Harry Potter</title>
        <author>J K. Rowling</author>
        <year>2005</year>
        <price>29.99</price>
    </book>
    <book category="WEB">
        <title>Learning XML</title>
        <author>Erik T. Ray</author>
        <year>2003</year>
        <price>39.95</price>
    </book>
</bookstore>

In the example above, both <bookstore> and <book> have element content, because they contain other elements. The <book> element also has attributes (category="CHILDREN"). <title>, <author>, <year>, and <price> have text content, because they contain text.

XML Naming Rules

XML elements must follow these naming rules:

  • Names can contain letters, numbers, and other characters
  • Names cannot start with a digit or punctuation character
  • Names cannot start with the letters xml (or XML, Xml, etc.)
  • Names cannot contain spaces

You can use any name, there are no reserved words.

Best Naming Habits

Make the names descriptive. Using underscores in the name is also fine: <first_name>, <last_name>.

Names should be short and simple: <book_title> instead of <the_title_of_the_book>.

Avoid "-" characters. If you name something like "first-name", some software will think you want to subtract name from first.

Avoid "." characters. If you name something like "first.name", some software will think "name" is a property of "first".

Avoid ":" characters. Colons are reserved for use with namespaces (explained later).

XML documents often have a corresponding database where fields correspond to XML elements. A useful practice is to use the naming conventions from your database for the elements in your XML document.

In XML, non-English letters like éòá are completely legal, though you need to be aware that problems may arise if your software supplier does not support these characters.

XML Elements are Extensible

XML elements are extensible, to carry more information.

Take a look at the following XML example:

<note>
    <to>Tove</to>
    <from>Jani</from>
    <body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>

Let's imagine we create an application that extracts the <to>, <from>, and <body> elements from the XML document and produces the following output:

MESSAGE
To: Tove
From: Jani
Don't forget me this weekend!

Imagine the author of the XML document adds some extra information:

<note>
    <date>
```
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