General XML Syntax Rules

General Rules for Coding XML Documents

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet ...?>
<!DOCTYPE top-elem-name>
<top-elem-name ...>
   ...
</top-elem-name>

General rules for coding XML-based feeds

• Certain special characters need to be escaped to avoid having the code interpreted as a delimiter or other special meaning:

  escape all ampersand (&) characters

  escape all ampersands with & to prevent them from being interpreted as XML character entities

  escape all less than (<) symbols

  escape all < symbols with < to prevent them from being interpreted as the starting delimiter of an XML tag

  escape all greater than (>) symbols

  escape all > symbols with > to prevent them from being interpreted as the ending delimiter of an XML tag

  escape double quotes (") within double-quoted attributes

  escape double quotes in attributes as "

  escape apostrophes (') within single-quoted attributes

  escape apostrophes (single quotes) in attributes as &apost;

  escape special characters

  escape other special characters using the appropriate decimal character code (&#nnn;) or hexadecimal character code (&#xnnnn;). For example, code a non-breaking space as either   or   (not  ).

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