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How do you process XML?

XML can be processed in several different ways, using a variety of processors.  Regardless of the processor used, though, the job of the processor remains the same: take the data within an XML document, combine it with data from outside sources (such as CSS or XSL files), and present that information to the application that’s requesting the data (often the XML parser that’s built into modern browsers.)

For the casual XML programmer, the processor isn’t as big a deal as one might think.  You won’t be dealing with the processor directly, and you certainly won’t be programming your own processor… instead, you simply will provide the XML code for the processor to use, and make sure that the code is written correctly so as to avoid any errors that the processor might encounter.

In case you’re wondering how you access the processor, it’s something you’ve been doing this whole time:

           

Your declaration alerts the browser or other program that the file it’s seeing is written in XML, and it diverts it to the processor from there.