Page 1 of 2

Anyone use XML?

Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2003 6:05 pm
by JPlush76
Just wondering who uses XML in their applications and what do you use it for?

If you dont, do you know any practical uses for it? Its one of those things I'd like to add to my toolbox.

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 6:34 am
by pootergeist
In a vague sort of a way I do as my site currently uses a cron setup to parse rdf/rss newsfeeds which are xml based.

For distributing data among servers it is truly ideal.

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 6:46 am
by DeGauss
Yeah... But i'm waiting for XML to become more useful.

XML is still experimental, so whilst it works, it doesn't work in the way that i would want to use it regularly.

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 2:08 pm
by daven
I use it for credit-card verifications. SurePay requires XML document submission.

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 2:22 pm
by jason
DeGauss wrote:Yeah... But i'm waiting for XML to become more useful.

XML is still experimental, so whilst it works, it doesn't work in the way that i would want to use it regularly.
:?: :?: Useful? It already is. Experimental? Hardly.

Right now I am using XML in many ways.

1. My RDF/RSS Feed is generated by an XML output of my news.
2. That same XML output also feeds my site's news posting. Both of these transformations use XSL. I output the stuff in one format, and I can convert it to whatever format I want. I am now working on a format for Panels in Mozilla.
3. My content is slowly being converted to DocBook format. This will open up new doors, as a lot of software exist for converting DocBook XML files to another format. Maybe one day I will have content available in other formats, such as PDF.
4.Trackback uses XML. I am now able to communicate to other people using the Trackback standard for web blogs.
5. Working on an interface for a Server/Client forum engine using XML based web services...

shall I continue?

Posted: Thu Mar 06, 2003 2:23 pm
by JPlush76
yes, continue please :)

lol

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2003 9:02 am
by moramata
I use XML in the OO framework that I use. It is called Eocene.
All configuration (like paths, urls, commands, etc.) is in XML.
To find Eocene framework, please search PHP Eocene in Google.

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2003 9:35 am
by Stoker
XML is useful in many way, although if you don't have DOM/XML and XSLT/Sablotron support in your PHP installation it isn't that much fun to play with :)

UPS and USPS use XML for their web API's, I'm using this in some applications (PS: Strict licensing rules from UPS and USPS), as mentioned, Surepay uses it for their payment gateway, and so does Verisign I believe, Verizon has an XML api.. and many many more ...

XML is not experimental, it's been in existence for more than 5 years and the past two it has been taking off, being used a lot more, there are quite a few XML standards/schemas for various business/industries, web-services seem to be the fastest growing these days..

Posted: Fri Mar 07, 2003 7:41 pm
by m3mn0n
what are some good XML learning sites?

Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2003 7:12 pm
by evilcoder
yeh i've been wanting to learn what the hell it is and how to use it as well. Anyone know?

Posted: Mon Mar 10, 2003 9:05 am
by Stoker
I don't know much about sites, would search for tutorials etc..

XML in itself is really nothing other than a subset of SGML, just as HTML is, although XML is much stricter.. XML is hypertexted data, nothing else, nothing more... There is no such thing as "Programming XML", as XML is just data.

Code: Select all

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<myrootelement>

  <myrecord>
    <myfield>Hello</myfield>
    <myotherfield>World</myotherfield>
  </myrecord>

  <myrecord>
    <myfield>Beer</myfield>
    <myotherfield>Samuel Adams</myotherfield>
  </myrecord>

</myrootelement>
That is a fully valid well formed XML document. In this pasrticular one I made it with two "records" with similar content, sort of like a XML data export, there is nothing that says it must be like that, it could be any number of elemenets and subelements in any given orders, there is no predefined data structures in XML itself, other than a few rules, such as there can only be one root element, which I callled myrootelement.

When I say XML is nothing more than that it is XML in itself which isn't, however, there are many things you may use to make XML be more useful, such as Schemas and DTDs to validate the data and data structures.

The XML standard enables us to validate any XML document with any standards compliant XML validator, and to parse (do something with) the data with any parser.

There are many standards and "protocols" based on XML, pretty much for any industry or subject that has data or interraction with compiuters. The standards has nothing to do with XML in itself.

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 7:27 am
by anjanesh
I dont know for how long this been around but Winamp 3 and Winamp 5 mordern skins use XML format. Winamp 3 was released in 2002 (I Think).
http://winamp.com/nsdn/winamp/skinning/modern/

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:08 am
by mudkicker
I use for RSS feed.

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:25 am
by feyd
uh.. the thread is two years old.

Posted: Sun Feb 20, 2005 9:51 am
by anjanesh
I was searching for RSS / XML based stuff and came across this. Did not see the date.