Chapter 11. XML

XML, the Extensible Markup Language, is a standardized data format. It looks a little like HTML, with tags (<example>like this</example>) and entities (&amp;). Unlike HTML, however, XML is designed to be easy to parse, and there are rules for what you can and cannot do in an XML document. XML is now the standard data format in fields as diverse as publishing, engineering, and medicine. It's used for remote procedure calls, databases, purchase orders, and much more.

There are many scenarios where you might want to use XML. Because it is a common format for data transfer, other programs can emit XML files for you to either extract information from (parse) or display in HTML (transform). This chapter shows how to use the XML parser bundled with PHP, as well as how to use the optional XSLT extension to transform XML. We also briefly cover generating XML.