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What are tags and elements in XML?

XML holds structured data. That data is enclosed in tags. A tag starts with < and ends with />.

XML has three types of tags:

  • Start tags, such as <start>
  • End tags, such as </start>
  • Empty-element tags, such as <line-break />

Start tags and end tags must match. For every starting tag, there must be an end tag for it. Empty-element tags are an exception.

Tag names must start with letters, and can only contain letters, numbers, and underscores.

Example

<city>New York</city>
<age>23</age>
<enabled>false</enabled>

Content is what's stored in between tags. Content can be nested, with tags inside of tags.

Example

<color>
    <red>205</red>
    <green>123</green>
    <blue>52</blue>
</color>

What is an element?

Elements refer to tags and the content within tags. An empty-element tag is also considered an element.

Note

This is different from JSON, where an element is an object.

Sources