XML File Documentation

A file with the XML extension, i.e. Extensible Markup Language, contains structured text files and other data.

The XML format is similar to the HTML extension, but one difference is that the XML format uses custom tags to specify objects and content. Another important difference is that the HTML format is intended only for presenting data, while the XML format also allows their editing.

The XML format was created by the W3C and is also a sublanguage of SGML.

Overview

Feature Value Description
File Extension .xml The standard file extension for XML files.
MIME Type application/xml, text/xml Standard MIME types used for XML files.
File Type Text-based XML is a text-based format, making it human-readable and editable with text editors.
Developed By W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) The organization responsible for maintaining the XML standard.
Initial Release 1998 The year XML was initially released.
Encoding UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-8859-1 Common character encodings supported by XML.
Root Element Required Every XML file must have a single root element that contains all other elements.
Namespaces Supported XML supports namespaces to avoid element name conflicts.
Schema Validation XSD, DTD XML supports schema validation through XML Schema Definition (XSD) and Document Type Definition (DTD).
Metadata Support Yes XML allows for the inclusion of metadata within the document.
Custom Tags Yes XML allows for the creation of custom tags for more flexible data representation.
Security Risks XXE Attacks, XML Bomb XML is susceptible to certain security risks like XML External Entity (XXE) attacks and XML Bomb attacks.
Advanced Features XPath, XQuery, XSLT XML supports advanced querying and transformation features like XPath, XQuery, and XSLT.
Compression Can be compressed with tools like gzip XML files can be compressed to save storage space and speed up data transmission.
Localization Supported via xml:lang attribute XML supports localization through the use of the xml:lang attribute.
Streaming Parsing Supported (e.g., SAX) XML supports streaming parsing methods like Simple API for XML (SAX) for efficient memory usage.
Comments Supported XML allows for comments, making it easier to annotate your code for better readability and maintenance.
CDATA Sections Supported XML supports CDATA sections for including text that should not be parsed by the XML parser.
Element Ordering Significant In XML, the order of elements can be significant, depending on how the XML is used.