Introduction to Tree-Based XML Programming Guide for Cocoa

XML is a ubiquitous and flexible markup standard for processing and exchanging data. You can find XML in property lists, as the file format of various applications, and as the format of various sources of information on the Internet, including web-based services. The NSXML classes of Foundation give you a way to process this information efficiently. NSXML logically represents an XML document as a hierarchical tree structure and allows you to query this structure and manipulate its nodes. It supports several XML-related technologies and standards, such as XQuery, XPath, XInclude, XSLT, DTD, and XHTML.

This document explains how you can use NSXML effectively. You might find this information valuable if you need to create, modify, and repeatedly query XML documents. If you simply need to parse XML and extract information from an existing source of XML, the NSXMLParser class is more suited to your needs. For information on using the NSXMLParser class, which is the Cocoa interface to a streaming XML parser, see Event-Driven XML Programming Guide.

Organization of This Document

This document includes the following articles:

A XML Glossary of XML terms is also included.

See Also

Many sources of information on XML and related standards and technologies are available on the Internet, including the following documents from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) website:

The following are useful websites on XML:

Several XQuery tutorials are listed at the end of Querying an XML Document underResources For Learning XQuery.