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With Internet Explorer, the unofficial <xml>
tag can be used to create an XML data island.
XML Data Embedded in HTML
An XML data island is XML data embedded into an HTML page.
Here is how it works; assume we have the following XML
document ("note.xml"):
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xml id="note">
<note>
<to>Tove</to>
<from>Jani</from>
<heading>Reminder</heading>
<body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>
</xml>
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Then, in an HTML document, you can embed the XML file above
with the <xml> tag. The id attribute of the <xml> tag defines an
ID for the data island, and the src attribute points to the XML
file to embed:
<html>
<body>
<xml id="note" src="note.xml"></xml>
</body>
</html>
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However, the embedded XML data is, up to this point, not
visible for the user.
The next step is to format and display the data in the data
island by binding it to HTML elements.
Bind Data Island to HTML Elements
In the next example, we will embed an XML file called "cd_catalog.xml"
into an HTML file.
View
"cd_catalog.xml".
The HTML file looks like this:
<html>
<body>
<xml id="cdcat" src="cd_catalog.xml"></xml>
<table border="1" datasrc="#cdcat">
<tr>
<td><span datafld="ARTIST"></span></td>
<td><span datafld="TITLE"></span></td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
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Example explained:
The datasrc attribute of the <table> tag binds the HTML table
element to the XML data island. The datasrc attribute refers to
the id attribute of the data island.
<td> tags cannot be bound to data, so we are using <span>
tags. The <span> tag allows the datafld attribute to refer to
the XML element to be displayed. In this case, it is datafld="ARTIST"
for the <ARTIST> element and datafld="TITLE" for the <TITLE>
element in the XML file. As the XML is read, additional rows are
created for each <CD> element. |
