You Have Learned XML DOM, Now What?

XML DOM Summary

The XML DOM defines a standard for accessing and manipulating XML.

According to the DOM, everything in an XML document is a node.

The text of an element node is stored in a text node.

The XML DOM views an XML document as a tree-structure. The tree structure is called a node-tree.

In a node tree, the terms parent, child, and sibling are used to describe the relationships.

All modern browsers have a build-in XML parser that can be used to read and manipulate XML.

With the XML DOM properties and methods, you can access every node in an XML document.

Important node properties: nodeName, nodeValue, and nodeType.

When using properties or methods like childNodes or getElementsByTagName(), a node list object is returned.

Different browsers treat new line, or space characters, between nodes differently.

To ignore empty text nodes between element nodes, you can check the node type.

Nodes can be navigated using node relationships.

Our XML DOM examples also represent a summary of this XML DOM tutorial.

What to Study Next?

Our recommendation is to learn about XSLT.

If you want to learn more about validating XML, we recommend DTD and XML Schema.

Below is a short description of each subject.

XSLT (XML Stylesheet Language Transformations)

XSLT is the style sheet language for XML files.

With XSLT you can transform XML documents into other formats, like XHTML.

If you want to learn more about XSLT, please visit our XSLT tutorial.

XML DTD (Document Type Definition)

The purpose of a DTD is to define what elements, attributes and entities is legal in an XML document.

With DTD, each of your XML files can carry a description of its own format with it.

DTD can be used to verify that the data you receive, and your own data, is valid.

If you want to learn more about DTD, please visit our DTD tutorial.