[thelist] XML Output Help

Jason Handby jason_handby at illustraresearch.com
Wed Aug 4 11:30:33 CDT 2004


> (Man I'm full of questions today) I attempted to learn XML a 
> few months ago and picked up on a few things, but a project 
> has come up and now I need to know how to get the XML data 
> into a human readable format. Take the following XML data 
> below for example:
> 
> - <xs:element name="TRAFFICSTATS">
>   - <xs:annotation>
>       <xs:documentation>
>  	 Traffic statistics for the given site
>       </xs:documentation> 
>     </xs:annotation>
>   - <xs:complexType>
>     - <xs:sequence>
>         <xs:element ref="ITEM" maxOccurs="unbounded" /> 
>       </xs:sequence>
>       <xs:attribute name="site" type="xs:string" use="required" /> 
>     </xs:complexType>
>   </xs:element>
> 
> How do I sift thought <xs: ...></xs: ...> stuff to get the 
> actual text and how should I display it. I have a good 
> foundation in ASP, PHP, C/C++, so I'm prepared for about 
> anything you throw me. I got the above code from: 
> http://client.alexa.com/partner/xsd/alexa_main.xsd
> I'm just trying to use this example as a *rather steep* 
> learning curve.

That's not an XML file, that's an XML Schema Definition [1].  Basically it's
a special kind of XML file that you can use to describe the schema of your
other XML files. More about schemas here, for example:

  http://www.w3schools.com/schema/schema_intro.asp

Unless you specifically meant to use a schema file, I suggest you choose
another more typical XML file as your starting point. Probably this means
looking for one with an .XML extension :-)




Jason

[1] OK, so technically it's both, because XSDs are written in XML. But you
know what I mean.



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