View Full Version : parser????

03-03-2004, 10:47 AM
i am new to XML and need clarification from u.
i want to know what does a 'parser' mean? i am really confused trying to figure out exactly what is it?
i want to write XML programs and need to transform them into HTML,XSLt etc..now in this case, do i need a parser and if yes, where can i get a parser and what exactly does a 'parser' do??
thanks in advance

03-03-2004, 05:25 PM
An XML parser is a program that reads the XML file and translates it into an in-memory hierarchical representation, and send that by XML Infoset, DOM, SAX or any other API like that to the application that handles the resulting hierarchical representation of the structure described by the XML document. The target application may be a browser, a database application, or any other program that handles XML. Almost all programs that handle XML have an XML processor bundled with them, though, so you wouldn't need to provide one to them.

In XML you write documents, not programs. In transforming them to XSLT you use an XSLT processor, either the built in XSLT processor in a clientside user agent such as iew or moz, or a server side processor.

To give you some advice on what you should do/look for, I think you need to specify a bit more what you're going to use the XML for both on the server and on the client, as well as what tools and programs you have to deal with on either side.

If you really need an XML processor, you could have a look at <http://horizon.nserl.purdue.edu/Xml/XMLtools.html>, which is a list of pretty much the best XML related tools list you can find.