A 5-Minute Crash Course in XML

If you already know about xml, you can skip this section.

XML is a generalized way of describing hierarchical structured data. An XML document contains one or more elements, which are delimited by start and end tags. This is a complete (albeit boring) xml document:

① This is the start tag of the foo element.

② This is the matching end tag of the foo element. Like balancing parentheses in writing or mathematics or code, every start tag must be closed (matched) by a corresponding end tag.

Elements can be nested to any depth. An element bar inside an element foo is said to be a subelement or child of foo.

The first element in every xml document is called the root ...