Is there anyone in here who knows about xml feeds? Anyone who knows a good deal of sources to read or something that can give out a sample written code?

Thanks guys.

Are you talking about RSS feeds? XML feeds is a bit abstract... RSS, Atom, etc. are all types of XML feed.

If it's RSS news feeds you want to learn about, a good place to start would be the RSS 2.0 specification (google it).

XML feeds are just XML documents that are consumed by something. If you don't already know XML, take a look at the tutorials on w3schools.com

I'll be working with someone who will install some SEs into an interface that would generate us some data. After installation, I will be assigned to write xml to combine the data and present them to previous interface. Unfortunately, this will be my firs time to work on xml feeds. A few exmaples as to how it looks like and how it functions would be very helpful.

Don't understand what exactly you mean by this.

I will be assigned to write xml to combine the data and present them to previous interface.

You can't use XML to collect data, it is basically a means of presenting data in a way that a user agent that can handle or process XML can display it. The data will have to be processed by serverside code into a XML document which can then be fed to the client side XML application.

XML Application

XML Tutorial

Thanks Chrishirst. By the way the installed SEs will collect the needed data and if all data are there, is it possible tha with the use of xml all data from two different SEs can be combined? Thanks for the tutorials too.

It should be possible but you are starting to get into AJAX territory now rather than plain XML and quite honestly what you are trying to accomplish would be much simpler using server side code.

XML is not a scripting language, it is a markup language used for describing information/data in the same way that HTML is a markup language used for displaying information/data.

XML is not a replacement for HTML, which is where so many people have the wrong ideas about what XML is for.

Must be that I'm one of those people who thought xml to be that way Chrishirst.

If xml is not a scripting language how come this client of mine is asking me to write xml feeds? All I know is that xml feeds are written as rss feeds. Am I right?

Writing XML feeds is simply the process of coding the XML document for subsequent use by other user agents. Two methods of use exist. A "pull" feed, where a UA will read the document from your server and a "push" feed where you will upload the document to another location.
A Google sitemap is one example of a XML feed, Froogle feeds are another. The sitemap is a "pull" feed and Froogle is a "push" feed

With pull feeds your server becomes the feeder for others to use. If you look at the bottom of this page you will find RSS feeds etc, RSS is XML formatted in a way that the RSS readers can understand the node descriptors (the RSS standard)

If you wanted to pull these feeds for your own use you would need to write a transform document (XSLT) which is basically a stylesheet for XML, that "transformed" the raw XML feed into XHTML for display at the browser/UA.

Take the W3Schools CD Catalogue for example. It appears as a fairly basic layout using tables (it's tabular data so that's ok). But look at the source, and you will see that it's actually XML. This is where the power of XML/XSLT shows and where XHTML should be used.

All in all, I would say your client doesn't have a clue what they are asking for (nothing new there then). What you need to do is to clarify the use of these feeds so you know or can establish the intended format. Each intended user may require a different format.

Hello Chris!

Actually, I have requested for more info from my client but he hasn't replied to my email yet. So far I have strggled to work on some codes and I hope this will work.