Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable.
In XML every element is described by tags, which are denoted by <…>
brackets. Tags always have some name and may optionally contain some attributes and content. Attributes are always put together with the tag name inside the <…>
brackets, i.e. <tag attr1="value1" attr2="value2">
. On the other hand, the tag content is always put after the brackets and must end with the </tag>
element. Inside the tag content you may put text or some other tags, depending on the kind of input you want (and more importantly may) to enter. If a tag does not have any content, this must be indicated by putting the /
character before the closing bracket (i.e. <tag/>
). Tag attributes are still allowed in such a case.