Working With XML

Tag Structure
Special Characters
Comments

Tag Structure

All rules governing well-formed XML apply to the scripting of Interactive XML applications. These won't be detailed here, but following are some useful tips relating to tag structure:

1. Every opened tag must have a corresponding closing tag. For example:

            <a_tag>some_text</a_tag>

or

            <a_tag name="some_text"/>

2. Tags must be opened and closed at the same level. For example:

Incorect:

            <tag1>

                        <tag2>some_text</tag1>

            </tag2>

Correct:

            <tag1>

                        <tag2>some_text</tag2>

            </tag1>

3. The correct hierarchy of tags as described in this documentation must be respected. For example:

Incorrect:

<media>

                        <medias>

                                    <file>a_file.mp4</file>

                        </medias>

</media>

Correct:

<medias>

                        <media>

                                    <file>a_file.mp4</file>

                        </media>

</medias>

This is referred to in the Interactive XML Glossary later in this document as the parent-child relationship.

Note that you will NOT get an XML error when you debug the above incorrect code in a browser. However, the file specified in <file> will never be called.

Special Characters

In order to make certain characters display properly, they must be written as follows:

Quotation mark (")	"
Apostrophe (')	'
Ampersand (&)	&
Percent (%)	%
Less than (<)	&lt;
Greater than (>)	&gt;
Dash (–)	&#8211;

Line breaks in any output text must be written as follows: &#xD;

Comments

Comments begin with:

<!--

and end with: 

-->

For example:

<!-- this is where the user is asked for their email address -->

or

            <!--<tag1>

                        <tag2>xyz</tag2>

            </tag1>-->

In the second case, the code within the comment will not be executed.

Note that two hyphens in a row (--) may ONLY be used to denote comments.