Processing instruction nodes

A processing instruction node encapsulates an XML processing instruction.

A processing instruction node can have zero or one parent. The target of a processing instruction must be an NCName (a local name with no colons).

A processing instruction node has the following node properties:
  • target
  • content
  • parent
For example, consider the following processing instruction:
<?xml-stylesheet href="book.css" type="text/css"?>

This processing instruction has the following property values:

Table 1. Properties of the processing instruction node
Node property Value
target xml-stylesheet
content href="book.css" type="text/css"
parent document node
The string value of a processing instruction node is the content of the node, which in this case is href="book.css" type="text/css". The typed value is the same value as the string value and is also type xs:string.