What is XML good for and when should i be using it?

Posted by Haroldo on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Haroldo
Published on 2010-05-20T08:08:15Z Indexed on 2010/05/20 8:10 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 148

Filed under:

Xml

|

php

|

JSON

|

JavaScript

I'm curious, I've been developing pretty powerful websites/web apps, and I've never learnt XML, even odder I've never really felt the need to. It's not like Curl or Prepared Statements where before knowing what they did and how they worked I had a feeling 'there's got to be an easier way to do this!' or 'there's got to be something designed for this!'.

Currently I work with MySQL and JSON and I don't have this feeling of 'I need to learn that' (XML), this must be wrong!

I'm really interested to hear some compelling arguments for XML, and learn about things which it can do beter than JSON or MySQL (or some other aspect of web dev) and when i should be using it!

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about Xml

Store XML,update record in XML,retrive a specific record in XML stored on BB device

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I am writing a blackberry application where i want to store the data returned by a web service in my BB device.Earlier i was going to use SQLite for storing the data in mobile but as i googled and also did programming using SQLite and found that some BB devices dont support SQLite library and fail… >>> More
gwt+xml- can i read through incomplete XML using the GWT XML Parser

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have a requirement where a user is typing in XML in a text area, and I want to show the various nodes in a tree...But as the user is typing in the xml, it wont be a complete xml (since he is still typing in the XML)... How do I read an incomplete XML and correctly generate the tree? I understand… >>> More
perl xml parser get xml content within xml

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
How can I use XMLParser to get the item-@url, item-@replace and item-"value inside" for the content as a string of the node where item-@cone="one"? <cstep> <item cone="one" url="http://google.com/{ccc}/cthree" replace="{ccc}"> <itemsub conesub="conesub"> … >>> More
Reading php generated XML in flash?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Here is part 1 of our problem (Loading a dynamically generated XML file as PHP in Flash). Now we were able to get Flash to read the XML file, but we can only see the Flash render correctly when tested(test movie) from the actual Flash program. However, when we upload our files online to preview the… >>> More
Announcing RSS feeds of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework code samples

as seen on Geeks with Blogs - Search for 'Geeks with Blogs'
Today, we are not only announcing Sample Browser v2 CTP, but we are also excited to announce the availability of RSS feeds of All-In-One Code Framework code samples. By using these feeds, you can easily track and download the new code samples. English RSS feeds All code samples: http://support… >>> More

Related posts about php

Magento, NGINX, PHP-FPM, APC, MEMCACHED, 16gb Ram CentOS, Spiking PHP-FPM to 100% CPU

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have been trying to resolve my issue of spiking cpu caused by php-fpm processes. I've reduced the php-fpm config settings to: pm = ondemand pm.max_children = 12 pm.start_servers = 2 pm.min_spare_servers = 2 pm.max_spare_servers = 10 pm.max_requests = 500 php_admin_value[memory_limit] = 128M Problem… >>> More
PHP Pear Installation on CentOS

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
[root@ip ~]# yum install php-pear* Reducing CentOS-5 Testing to included packages only Finished Setting up Install Process Package 1:php-pear-1.8.1-2.el5.centos.noarch already installed and latest versio … >>> More
Apache configurations for php "AddType text/html php" or "AddType application/x-httpd-php php .php"

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I am taking over an application server and discover that it contain the following settings: AddType text/html php Although it works, but my understanding is that it should set as following: AddType application/x-httpd-php php .php What are the key differences between the two settings?… >>> More
mod_rewrite settings causes server to throw HTTP 500 errors instead of 404

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
Hello. I have a server with VBulletin forum (working under Apache 2.2, CentOS). The default settings for it in .htaccess are as follows: RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^gsmforum\.ru RewriteRule (.*) http://www.gsmforum.ru/$1 [R=301,L] # If you are having problems or are using VirtualDocumentRoot… >>> More
Problems installing Memcache (PECL extension)

as seen on Server Fault - Search for 'Server Fault'
I have installed memcached fine, and now I will need to install PECL extension memcache. Im running RedHat x86_64 es5. The installation gives me this: downloading memcache-2.2.6.tgz ... Starting to download memcache-2.2.6.tgz (35,957 bytes) ..........done: 35,957 bytes 11 source files, building running:… >>> More