Sams Teach Yourself XML in 10 Minutes

An XML Document

An XML document has the following general structure but some parts are optional:

• A prolog, which may optionally be empty

• At least one element, the document element, although a typical XML document has a nested structure of elements

• Optional content following the end tag of the document element

Each of these permitted parts of an XML document is described in the remaining sections of this chapter.

A minimal XML document can consist of a single document element, such as this:

<someElementTypeName>The content</someElementTypeName> 

Typically, XML documents are much more complex and have a nested structure of elements. An XML document that uses more of the allowed structures might look like this:

 <?xml version="1.0" ?> <!-- This ...