Editing XML Files?
 

What is the best program(s) to use to edit a XML file? We've tried notepad and HTML editors and while they do allow us to edit the files, when we save them as XML and open the files again we get errors :( So what's the best thing to use to edit them? :ermm:

Dreamweaver has some simple support for XML (especially Dreamweaver 8). There are also very powerful XML tools such as Oxygen. Eclipse also has XML support.

What errors do you get? As long as you use valid XML, I don't see how you could get errors saving and reopening the file.

As a side note, XML is awesome. Anybody reading this thread who doesn't know XML should learn it immediately. I'm using XML for a new project at my web site that will blow your mind (I am not modest). Hint: with XML, you can publish information from vBulletin to any other application that supports XML parsing. And yes, you can create XML in PHP: http://www.php.net/dom .

I just got a bunch of xml books that I ordered off of Amazon. I'm really excited about learning it for my website.

This is the error we're getting using notepad.

Are you sure Notepad is opening it and not Internet Explorer?

The first time or the second time? We originally opened it in IE and copied it. Then we pasted it in notepad and edited/saved as xml. When we reopen it we get the error above, although every once and a while it does open correctly (after saving it).

You probably copied the visual expand/collapse bits. Don't use IE at all for XML except for viewing (and I use Firefox for that). Only copy and paste in a text or XML editor.

That was the problem. Now when I open straight to notepad/wordpad and edit/save it seems to save correctly :)

Thank you filburt1, I appreciate the help! I'm also downloading Oxygen now :)

We went to the library and got a bunch of books on XML. It's very straight forward and easy to learn. You can even double quote with it. There is however one thing that we don't understand and we can't find in any of the XML manuals, so hopefully someone here knows the answer. We noticed on a lot of skins that the date area is written out as 'date="1121280429"' or 'date="1121146500"' or similar.

Why is this? :ermm:

It represents seconds since the epoch (midnight on January 1st, 1970). It's the standard date format that vB adopted as well. It has the benefit of very easy mathematical calculactions including comparisons and difference as well as storage as a simple numeric type, but the disadvantages of not being human-readable in the slightest.

So if we were writting a XML file from scratch, how would we know what to put there? :ermm:

I'm using edit plus and with line wrap on, the xml files get damaged. The solution is turn off word warp and save it seems.

It don't seem to damage the files on my system, but when I zipped um and posted um and downloaded um, they were bad files. With line wrap off, all seems fine.

But damn, it sure caused me lots of headaches realizing that was happening. Made my Quick ShoutBox Plugin seem broke to several users. :(

http://www.php.net/time .

Thank you Filburt. Appreciate it :)

You might have a corrupt copy. We have 2.20 and it works fine with the line wrap on :nervous:

Yes, I think you are correct. The damage came from a copy and paste it seems. I only used the damaged snippet in the Quick ShoutBox Plugin so it was hard to figure out. All my other XML files were ok. But they are small and had no wraps in them. Downloading the zipped version exposed the damage.

I'm glad it's not EditPlus.

Eclipse is a great tool I'm using it for my Java module this year at University :)

It's also useful for XML :)

Chris