XML Attributes

• Attributes are used to provide additional information about an element in an XML document.
• In this tutorial, you will learn about XML attributes, their syntax, usage, and important points to keep in mind while working with attributes.

Syntax

The syntax for defining an attribute in an XML document is as follows:

<element attribute="value">content</element>

Here, attribute is the name of the attribute, and value is the value assigned to it. The attribute and value are enclosed in double quotes, and separated from the element name by a space.

Example

<person name="John" age="35">Hello, World!</person>

In the above example, the person element has two attributes - name with value "John" and age with value "35". The content of the element is "Hello, World!".

Output

When the XML document is parsed, the output for the above example will be:

Name: John
Age: 35
Content: Hello, World!

Explanation

Attributes provide additional information about an element that is not part of the content of the element. In the example above, the name and age attributes provide information about the person, while the content of the element provides the message "Hello, World!".

Use

Attributes are commonly used to provide metadata about an element, such as its ID, class, or style. They are also useful for providing information about the author, date of creation, and other properties of the document as a whole.

Important Points

• Attributes must always be quoted.
• An element may have zero or more attributes.
• Attributes must have a name and a value.
• Attribute names are case-sensitive.

Summary

In this tutorial, you learned about XML attributes, their syntax, usage, and important points to keep in mind while working with attributes in an XML document. Attributes provide additional information about an element that is not part of the content of the element. They are commonly used to provide metadata about an element or information about the author and other properties of the document.