XML Syntax & Scripting Basics

XML (eXtended Markup Language) is a data interchange format just like JSON and YAML which pretty much does the same thing in networking applications. This is the most simplest format of its type and have few rules only. You can see this file type as .xml

HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) and XML are related to each other where HTML is used for the data presentation whereas the main purpose of XML is to store and transfer the data. HTML is a simple, predefined language and XML is a data interchange format.

Information is stored in between tags and they are also called elements. These elements themselves can be enclosed within other elements and can be called child elements and parent elements.

Let's analyze a simple XML script..

As you can see, this script contains information about networking devices.

Tags / Elements can have any name, cannot have spaces.

<networking_devices> is the root tag or parent element of all tags.

Elements on 3rd and 4th lines are child elements of the parent element on 2nd line.