What is an XML Document?

A basic XML document is simply an XML element that can, but might not include nested XML elements. For example, the XML element 'books' below is a valid XML document.

<books>
   <book isbn="0735605629">
      <title>XML in Action</title>
      <author>William J. Pardi</author>
   </book>
</books>

An element can optionally contain one or more attributes. An attribute is a name-value pair separated by an equal sign (=). In the example above, (isbn="0345374827") is an attribute of the 'book' element. There are some key things to remember when constructing a basic XML document:

• all elements must have an closing tag
• all elements must be cleanly nested (overlapping elements are not allowed)
• all attribute values must be enclosed in quotation marks
• each document must have a unique first element, the document element

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