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XML Data Island

With Internet Explorer, the unofficial <xml> tag can be used to create an XML data island.

XML Data Embedded in HTML

An XML data island is XML data embedded into an HTML page.

Here is how it works; assume we have the following XML document ("note.xml"):

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<note>
  <to>Tove</to>
  <from>Jani</from>
  <heading>Reminder</heading>
  <body>Don't forget me this weekend!</body>
</note>

Then, in an HTML document, you can embed the XML file above with the <xml> tag. The id attribute of the <xml> tag defines an ID for the data island, and the src attribute points to the XML file to embed:

<html>
<body>

<xml id="note" src="note.xml"></xml>

</body>
</html>

However, the embedded XML data is, up to this point, not visible for the user.

The next step is to format and display the data in the data island by binding it to HTML elements.

Bind Data Island to HTML Elements

In the next example, we will embed an XML file called "cd_catalog.xml" into an HTML file.

View "cd_catalog.xml".

The HTML file looks like this:

<html>
<body>

<xml id="cdcat" src="cd_catalog.xml"></xml>

<table border="1" datasrc="#cdcat">
<tr>
<td><span datafld="ARTIST"></span></td>
<td><span datafld="TITLE"></span></td>
</tr>
</table>

</body>
</html>

Example explained:

The datasrc attribute of the <table> tag binds the HTML table element to the XML data island. The datasrc attribute refers to the id attribute of the data island.

<td> tags cannot be bound to data, so we are using <span> tags. The <span> tag allows the datafld attribute to refer to the XML element to be displayed. In this case, it is datafld="ARTIST" for the <ARTIST> element and datafld="TITLE" for the <TITLE> element in the XML file. As the XML is read, additional rows are created for each <CD> element.

If you are running IE 5.0 or higher, you can try it yourself.

Also try this example, demonstrating <thead>, <tbody>, and <tfoot>.

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