The File Format

First, let’s look at the file format that I designed. A topic file with one response appears in Listing 14.1. You’ll see the custom tags I created for this file format.

Listing 14.1. The Topic File Format for the Web Discussion Application
 1: <topic> 
 2: <title>Sample Topic</title> 
 3: <author>Rafe Colburn</author> 
 4: <lastmodified>1024805727</lastmodified> 
 5: <post> 
 6: Just some information you might find interesting.</post> 
 7: <responses> 
 8: <response> 
 9: <responseauthor>John Doe</responseauthor> 
10: <responsepost>Yes, that was interesting.</responsepost> 
11: </response> 
12: </responses> 
13: </topic>

Let’s look at the tags (or elements, as they’re called in the XML world) that appear in the file. These tags aren’t HTML tags, ...

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