Assignment 3 for CSCI 431

Working with XML

Background Information:

• Name the file created for this assignment pizza.xml and put it in your ftp directory for this class.
• Sources of information on XML:
  • material from Stanford University
  • Microsoft's XML site
  • xml.com
  • Web Developers Virtual Library
• You will need to download or copy this DTD to the directory where you will write your XML page.

Assignment

• I've given you a DTD (see above) that describes the information that your XML page will contain. This is a DTD that would be appropriate for a hypothetical on-line pizza shop. You must write an XML page that conforms to this DTD. The page must contain the description of at least 2 pizzas, one pizza containing the minimum number of elements and their attributes and the other containing two or more instances of all elements if allowed. You can, of course, include more than 2 pizzas.
• To link your XML to the DTD, you will need the start of your XML file to contain the lines:
  <?xml version="1.0" ?>
  <!DOCTYPE pizzas SYSTEM "pizza.dtd">
• Here is a small selection of pizza images.
• Check the syntax of your XML using the xmlint utility from Microsoft. It's just a DOS command-line utility, which you can download yourself from the Microsoft site (above) or copy as a zipped file from this link. Xmlint checks for valid XML against the DTD, as well as well-formed XML (which IE5 does also). In order to get full credit for this assignment your XML document must be valid. This part of the assignment is not concerned with the display of your document.

Extra Credit: (10 additional pts)

• Write a XSL (or CSS) file to generate the display of your XML document. Try looking at this link to get started with XSL, or use the Shurtleff & Stair presentation (Examples, Slides) for CSS.

Helpful hints

• You should start with very small XML and XSL examples, then build larger pages as you gain confidence with the structures.
• Remember that XML and XSL are case sensitive, unlike HTML.
• All XML/XSL tags require a matching close tag or closing "/" -- even single tags like <BR/>.
• No overlapping tags are allowed -- this includes the HTML that is contained in your style sheet.
• The XML/XSL namespace is tree-structured, and always referenced to the current context (for example, in for-each and value-of tags). The path name separator is "/" -- attribute names are preceeded by "@".