Parsing, Creating, and Transforming XML Documents - Beginning Java 7 - page 903

<language>français</language>
</movie>
ThefinalattributethatcanappearintheXMLdeclarationis standalone .Thisop-
tionalattributedetermineswhethertheXMLdocumentreliesonanexternalDTD(dis-
cussedlaterinthischapter)—its valueis no —ornot—itsvalueis yes .Thevaluede-
faultsto no ,implyingthatthereisanexternalDTD.However,becausethereisnoguar-
antee of a DTD, standalone is rarely used and will not be discussed further.
Elements and Attributes
FollowingtheXMLdeclarationisa hierarchical (tree)structureofelements,wherean
element isaportionofthedocumentdelimitedbya start tag (suchas <name> )andan
end tag (suchas </name> ),orisan empty-element tag (astandalonetagwhosename
ends with a forward slash [ / ], such as <break/> ). Start tags and end tags surround
content and possibly other markup whereas empty-element tags do not surround any-
thing. Figure 10-1 reveals Listing 10-1 ' s XML document tree structure.
Figure 10-1. Listing 10-1 ' s tree structure is rooted in the recipe element.
AswithHTMLdocumentstructure,thestructureofanXMLdocumentisanchoredin
a root element (thetopmostelement).InHTML,therootelementis html (the <htm-
l> and </html> tagpair).UnlikeinHTML,youcanchoosetherootelementforyour
XML documents. Figure 10-1 shows the root element to be recipe .