XML
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XML is a markup language syntax, similar to SGML, but with draconian error handling that tends to make it fragile in practice.
How to not
How to not use XML, use HTML instead:
- If you're thinking of building something on/with XML, stop, and consider building on HTML instead. Beyond the obvious example of microformats, this lesson has been (re)learned many times across industries, e.g. 2021-06-26 One Enormous Step at a Time – Now JATS
… start with a HTML-compliant hierarchical structure, and add additional structure and data to it progressively – without needing to know anything about XML.
Criticism
Fragile
Examples and writeups about XML fragility:
Find more examples and writeups from this search, and include direct links and quotes here in the page:
Security Vulnerabilities
It is also susceptible to security vulnerabilities. See the description of the defusedxml Python library for a list of attacks.
- XML is so hard to parse, Apple upped their amount of parsers from 4 to 6 to fix a vulnerability.