xml learning (2) xml document tree structure diagram

XML documents form a tree structure

XML documents must contain the root element. This element is the parent element of all other elements.

The elements in an XML document form a document tree. The tree starts at the root and expands to the very bottom of the tree.

All elements can have child elements:

<root>
  <child>
    <subchild>.....</subchild>
  </child>
</root>

The above image represents a book in the following XML:

<bookstore>
<book category="COOKING">
  <title lang="en">Everyday Italian</title> 
  <author>Giada De Laurentiis</author> 
  <year>2005</year> 
  <price>30.00</price> 
</book>
<book category="CHILDREN">
  <title lang="en">Harry Potter</title> 
  <author>J K. Rowling</author> 
  <year>2005</year> 
  <price>29.99</price> 
</book>
<book category="WEB">
  <title lang="en">Learning XML</title> 
  <author>Erik T. Ray</author> 
  <year>2003</year> 
  <price>39.95</price> 
</book>
</bookstore>

In the example The root element is . All elements in the document are contained within a .

The element has 4 child elements: