17 Apr 2002.ppt

XML Syntax: DTDs Andy Clark Validation of XML Documents XML documents must be well-formed XML documents may be valid Validation verifies that the structure and content of the document follows rules specified by grammar Types of grammars Document Type Definition (DTD) XML Schema (XSD) Relax NG (RNG) What is a DTD? Document Type Definition Defined in the XML 1.0 specification Allows user to create new document grammars A subset borrowed from SGML Uses non-XML syntax! Document-centric Focus on document structure Lack of “normal” datatypes (e.g. int, float) Document Structure Element declaration Element name Content model Attribute list declaration Element name Attribute name Value type Default value Element Declaration Content models ANY EMPTY Children Nestable groups of sequences and/or choices Occurrences for individual elements and groups Mixed content Intermixed elements and parsed character data Children Content Model Sequences Order required e.g. (foo,bar,baz) Choices Any one from list e.g. (foo|bar|baz) Nested sequences and choices e.g. (foo,bar,(baz|mumble)) e.g. (foo|(bar,baz)) Children Occurrences Specify occurrence count for… Individual elements Groups of sequences and choices Occurrences Exactly one e.g. foo (foo,bar) Zero or one e.g. foo? (foo,bar)? Zero or more e.g. foo* (foo|bar)* One or more e.g. foo+ (foo|bar)+ Attribute List Declaration Value types CDATA ENTITY, ENTITIES ID, IDREF, IDREFS NMTOKEN, NMTOKENS NOTATION Enumeration of values e.g. (true|false) Default value #IMPLIED, #REQUIRED, #FIXED Default value if not specified in document Example DTD (1 of 6) Text declaration Example DTD (2 of 6) Element declarations Example DTD (3 of 6) Element content models Example DTD (4 of 6) Attribute list declarations Example DTD (5 of 6) Attribute value type Example DTD (6 of 6) Attribute default value Macro Substitution Using Entities What are entities? Document pieces, or “storage units” Simplify writing of documents and DTD grammars Modular