XML question- how much XML do I need to know?

Question

How much XML do I need to know if I plan on getting into AJAX? I only plan on using XML for the web so I want to learn more about AJAX capabilities (javascript and XML) but I was wondering if I needed to learn everything that there is to know about XML before jumping into learning AJAX.

Answer 1

You don't really need to know to much about XML to do AJAX. Despite it's name you can actually do AJAX without using XML at all. XML is just the most common format for sending data back and forth to the server, but the data could be in any format you like. If you learn the basic XML syntax and how to parse it on the client and server side then you should be fine.

Answer 2

In an absolute sense, you don't NEED to know ANY XML. There are other representations for the content, e.g., JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). JSON is tighter (less volume, since the tag markup is not required) and more directly accessible by JavaScript.

However, not everyone prefers JSON to XML, and thus, knowledge of XML is useful to enhance your overall skills. The amount of XML you require should not be great. Your familiarity with the DOM properties of XML documents and the methods of XML parsing should be good.