Chapter 14: JavaScript and XML

Overview

In the previous chapter we took a brief look at eXtensible Markup Language (XML). Like HTML, it consists of tags. We saw that its purpose was to describe data rather than actually display information in any particular format, which is the purpose of HTML. There is nothing special about XML. It is just plain text with the addition of some XML tags enclosed in angle brackets. We can use any software that can handle plain text to create and edit XML.

In this chapter we'll be covering the fundamentals of XML. It's a huge topic and deserves a whole book to do it justice, so this'll be a taster to get you started. Before we get down to coding let's look at what XML can be used for.