Top ten XML articles, top five tutorials - July 2010

1. Working with XML on Android: Build Java applications for mobile devices

   Android is a modern, open source operating system and SDK for mobile devices. With it you can create powerful mobile applications. This becomes even more attractive when your applications can access Web services, which means you need to speak the language of the Web: XML. In this article, you will see different options for working with XML on Android and how to use them to build your own Android applications.

2. Simplify Ajax development with jQuery: Discover how easy Ajax and DOM scripting can be

   jQuery is a JavaScript library that helps simplify your JavaScript and Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) programming. Unlike similar JavaScript libraries, jQuery has a unique philosophy that allows you to express common complex code succinctly. Learn about the jQuery philosophy, discover its features and functions, perform some common Ajax tasks, and find out how to extend jQuery with plug-ins.

3. Content feeds with RSS 2.0: Syndication goes mainstream

   A lot has happened in the RSS world since developerWorks last looked at RSS: Two new specifications have come out, RSS has become one of the most popular XML standards, and tools and feeds are popping up everywhere. RSS has contributed to the explosion of weblogs, and it is becoming a standard part of other Web sites, too. This article reviews RSS 2.0, looks at new RSS developments, and jump-starts your understanding of this important format.

4. Using Internet data in Android applications: Parse XML, JSON, and protocol buffers data

   Many of your Android applications will need to interact with Internet data, which comes in a variety of formats. In this article, build an Android application that works with two popular data formats—XML and JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)—as well as the more exotic protocol buffers format from Google. You'll learn about the performance and coding trade-offs associated with each format.

5. The Java XPath API: Querying XML from Java programs

   XPath expressions are much easier to write than detailed Document Object Model (DOM) navigation code. When you need to extract information from an XML document, the quickest and simplest way is to embed an XPath expression inside your Java™ program. Java 5 introduces the javax.xml.xpath package, an XML object-model independent library for querying documents with XPath.

6. Creating mobile Web applications with HTML 5, Part 1: Combine HTML 5, geolocation APIs, and Web services to create mobile mashups: Find and track location coordinates to use in various Web services

   In the first part of this five part series, you will tap into one of the most popular new technologies available to mobile Web applications: geolocation. High-end smartphones all have GPS built-in to them, and now you will learn how it can be used by a Web application. In this article you will learn how to use the various aspects of the geolocation standard and how to use it with some popular Web services to create an interesting mobile mashup.

7. Creating mobile Web applications with HTML 5, Part 5: Develop new visual UI features in HTML 5: Add Canvas, CSS3, and more semantic elements to mobile Web apps

   HTML 5 comes with plenty of new features for mobile Web applications, including visual ones that usually make the most impact. Canvas is the most eye-catching of the new UI capabilities, providing full 2-D graphics in the browser. In this article you learn to use Canvas as well as some of the other new visual elements in HTML 5 that are more subtle but make a big difference for mobile users.

8. A simple SOAP client: A general-purpose Java SOAP client

   This article describes a simple, general purpose SOAP client in Java that uses no specialized SOAP libraries. Instead of creating the SOAP request XML document for you under the hood, this client lets you create your own request with any XML editor (or text editor). Instead of merely giving you the remote method's return values, the client shows you the actual SOAP response XML document. The short Java program shows exactly what SOAP is all about: opening up an HTTP connection, sending the appropriate XML to invoke a remote method, and then reading the XML response returned by the server.

9. Tip: Convert Excel data to XML: Extract data from the popular spreadsheet program

   Believe it or not, not every document is originally written in XML. In this tip, Benoit Marchal explains how to unlock data from Excel files to process them in XML, and examines the pros and cons of different solutions.

10. New elements in HTML 5: Structure and semantics

    HTML 5 introduces new elements to HTML for the first time since the last millennium. New structural elements include aside, figure, and section. New inline elements include time, meter, and progress. New embedding elements include video and audio. New interactive elements include details, datagrid, and command.

Expand your skills with these recent, popular tutorials:

1. Build a web-based notification tool with XMPP: Write real-time web applications with XMPP, PHP, and JavaScript

   Real-time web applications are networked applications, with web-based user interfaces, that display Internet information as soon as it's published. Examples include social news aggregators and monitoring tools that continually update themselves with data from an external source. In this tutorial, you will create Pingstream, a small notification tool that uses PHP and JavaScript to communicate over the Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP), a set of XML technologies designed to support presence and real-time-communications functionality.

2. Build a digital book with EPUB: The open XML-based eBook format

   Need to distribute documentation, create an eBook, or just archive your favorite blog posts? EPUB is an open specification for digital books based on familiar technologies like XML, CSS, and XHTML, and EPUB files can be read on portable e-ink devices, mobile phones, and desktop computers. This tutorial explains the EPUB format in detail, demonstrates EPUB validation using Java technology, and moves step-by-step through automating EPUB creation using DocBook and Python.

3. Using Apache Pivot to build an iTunes search client: Build a rich internet application with WTKX and Java technology

   Apache Pivot is an open source platform for building rich internet applications (RIAs) in a Java™ environment. It combines the enhanced productivity and usability features of a modern RIA toolkit with the robustness of the industry-standard Java platform. Apache Pivot applications take advantage of WTKX, an XML-based language for user interface design, which makes the application's output easy to visualize. In this tutorial, you will follow the implementation of a simple but practical Pivot application that allows a user to execute searches against the contents of the iTunes Store.

4. Monitor home energy with AMEE: Create an energy monitor using XML, Ruby, Rails, and Ajax

   Electricity is invisible. To understand how people use it, you need to make it visible. This tutorial will show you how easy it is to build a Web-based energy monitoring system yourself, using a Current Cost real-time energy monitor and AMEE, a neutral Web-based API for energy data, combined with some XML, Ruby, Rails, and Ajax.

5. Create an alerts system using XMPP, SMS, pureXML, and PHP: Develop a Euro currency exchange rate application with automatic updates

   Thanks to the native XML support that pureXML® offers IBM DB2® database developers, you can load XML data directly into your database, freeing up development time to add functionality to your application. Follow along in this tutorial to import an XML file with Euro foreign exchange rates into an IBM DB2 database and use special XQuery and SQL/XML functions to split this XML into separate database rows. You will also create a PHP script that pulls down new rates from the European Central Bank (ECB) Web site each day. Then you will extend the script to send update alerts to a Google Talk user using the XMPP protocol, and to a cell phone by SMS text message using the Clickatell SMS gateway service. Finally, you will create a PHP script that generates a PNG (Portable Network Graphics) graph of this data.