Setting Default Values for Attributes

I'm going to start the examination of declaring attributes in DTDs by seeing what kind of default values you can specify for attributes.

Immediate Values

You can supply a default value for an attribute simply by giving that value in quotes in the attribute's declaration in the <!ATTLIST> element, as we've seen:

 <?xml version = "1.0" standalone="yes"?> <!DOCTYPE DOCUMENT [ <!ELEMENT DOCUMENT (CUSTOMER)*> <!ELEMENT CUSTOMER (NAME,DATE,ORDERS)> <!ELEMENT NAME (LAST_NAME,FIRST_NAME)> <!ELEMENT LAST_NAME (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT FIRST_NAME (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT DATE (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT ORDERS (ITEM)*> <!ELEMENT ITEM (PRODUCT,NUMBER,PRICE)> <!ELEMENT PRODUCT (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT NUMBER (#PCDATA)> <!ELEMENT PRICE (#PCDATA)> ...

Get Real World XML now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.