ABSTRACT
At this point in the book, we have learned about theoretical models for thinking about data representation and information exchange as well as about applied technologies for encoding and representing modular units of data. We will now learn to synthesize these ideas in order to solve problems in an applied environment. This chapter discusses XML parsers and then introduces three examples of XML parsers that can be used to process and act upon particular XML elements and attributes as they are scanned from a file. The first and simplest example uses existing XML files-structured as Really Simple Syndication (RSS) newsfeeds-as source content for a basic news display page that is used to update website visitors about news or events in a streaming fashion. This means that the content is pushed out to the users automatically-they can then choose whether or not to activate the link and receive more detailed content.
