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Using XML to document a weather forecast

We can use XML to hold structured data about a weather forecast:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<forecast>
    <dailyForecast>
        <date>2015-06-01</date>
        <description>sunny</description>
        <maxTemp unit="C">22</maxTemp>
        <minTemp unit="C">20</minTemp>
        <windSpeed unit="kph">12</windSpeed>
        <danger>false</danger>
    </dailyForecast>
    <dailyForecast>
        <date>2014-06-02</date>
        <description>windy</description>
        <maxTemp unit="C">22</maxTemp>
        <minTemp unit="C">20</minTemp>
        <windSpeed unit="kph">40</windSpeed>
        <danger>true</danger>
    </dailyForecast>
    <dailyForecast />
</forecast>

In the above example, we have a three-day forecast.

  • Each day is represented by the <dailyForecast> tag.
  • The third day is represented by an empty element: <dailyForecast />
  • The XML here is nested, with <forecast> as the top-level and the <dailyForecast> tags as the second-level.
  • The content of each tag captures weather forecast data, including the date (<date>), description (<description>), temperature (<maxTemp> and <minTemp>), wind speed (<windSpeed>), and alerts (<danger>).
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