Creating HTML from XML

Upon successful completion of this course, the student will be familiar and have worked with each of the following:

• HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT
  • Markup languages
  • SGML
  • HTML
  • XML
• APPLICATIONS/USES
  • Middle-tier for data transfer
  • Intelligent data in documents
  • Single source-multiple output
  • Delivering intelligent data to the browser
• XML TOOLS
  • XML viewers
  • XML parsers
  • XML editors
• XML SYNTAX
  • Tags
  • Elements
  • Attributes
  • Comments
  • Processing Instructions
  • Exercise: Create a simple document using XML markup.
• XML STRUCTURE
  • Well-formed structure
  • Valid structure
  • DTDs and Schemas - why and when to use them
  • Exercise: Check if our document is well-formed.
• DATA AND DOCUMENT STRUCTURE
  • Components of a document
  • Components of a data structure
  • Exercise: Analyze documents and data sets in plain English.
• DOCUMENT TYPE DEFINITION (DTD)
  • Definition
  • Defining an element
  • Element occurrence indicators
  • Element content models
  • Defining an attribute
  • Attribute content models
  • Specifying choices and default values
  • Entities
  • Internal entities
  • External entities
  • Internal and external DTDs
  • Specifying the DTD to the XML document
  • Using the DTD to validate an XML document
  • Exercise: Write DTDs based on our analysis in the prior unit.
• SCHEMAS
  • Definition
  • ElementType tag - defining elements
  • AttributeType tag - defining attributes
  • Element tag - using elements in an ElementType definition
  • Attribute tag - using attributes in an ElementType definition
  • Group tag - defining sets of elements in an ElementType
  • Datatypes
  • Descriptions
  • Defining the Schema namespace
  • Using the Schema to validate an XML document
  • Exercise: Write Schemas to reflect the structures of the DTDs.
• CSS (STYLE SHEETS) WITH XML
  • Definition
  • XML without a style sheet
  • Associating a style sheet with an XML document
  • Creating text blocks
  • Fonts, sizes, bold, italics and other character styles
  • Using margins and borders to create text boxes
  • Creating tables
  • Collapsing text with display:none
  • Exercise: Create style sheets to display our sample documents in a browser.
• XSL
  • Basic command set: xsl:template
  • Basic command set: xsl:value-of
  • Basic command set: xsl:for-each
  • Basic command set: xsl:apply-templates
  • Exercise: xsl_ex2.xml
  • Exercise: Write XSL stylesheets that will convert several XML files into HTML for display in a browser.