Lesson 1.3: Create and edit your XML file

1. In the Navigator view, right-click the CDTitle.dtd that you created earlier, and from its pop-up menu click Generate > XML File.
2. Select your project and accept the default name. Click Next.
3. Accept the default values in the Select Root Element page. Your XML file will be generated with a root element of CDLib and any elements generated will contain sample data.
4. Click Finish.

1. If necessary, open CDTitle.xml in the XML editor (to do so, right-click it in the Navigator view and click Open With > XML Editor.
2. In the Design view, select the CDLib element and expand it.
3. Edit the contents of the CD element. Change the artist value to John Brown, the description to Opera and the price to 15.00.
4. CDTitle.xml currently only contains one CD. You are going to add another:
   1. Right-click CDLib and select Add Child > CD.
   2. A new CD element is automatically created, and it contains three elements: artist, description, and price.
   3. Change the artist value to Jane Smith, the description to Classical and the price to 20.00.
   4. Click File > Save to save your changes.
5. Try to add and remove certain elements and attributes from the first CD element:
   1. Right-click artist. The menu option Remove is not available because artist is a required element. (You specified this in your DTD file.)
   2. Right-click description and price. The menu option Remove is not available because they are also required items.
   3. Right-click CD and click Add Child. You have the option to add another artist, but not another description or price. The option to add another description or price is not available, because in CDTitle.dtd, you specified that these items could only occur once inside a CD element. However, you specified that you could have one or more artist elements, which is why you can select to add another artist.
6. You are now going to turn the grammar constraints off, and continue to edit CDTitle.xml. Click XML > Turn Grammar Constraints Off.
7. Right-click artist in the first CD element and click Remove. You can remove this required element because the grammar constraints are off.
8. Right-click description in the first CD element and click Remove.
9. Right-click the first CD element and select Add Child. You now have the option to add another price. Click price.
10. Save your file. Note that you are allowed to save it even with all the syntactical errors. This is because you turned the constraints off.
11. In the Navigator view, right-click the XML file and click Validate XML File. The errors you have introduced into the file are listed in the Problems view.

You are now going to edit the CDTitle.xml file in the Source view and fix the errors that you introduced into the file:

1. Select your XML file, and click XML > Turn Grammar Constraints On to turn the grammar constraints back on.
2. Click the Source tab to switch to the Source view.
3. Place your cursor after the opening tag for the first CD element: <cd>
4. Press Ctrl + Space to activate code assist. A pop-up list of available choices, which is based on the context, is displayed.
5. Double-click artist.
6. Type John Brown between the <artist> tags.
7. Now place your cursor after the artist tags and active code assist. Double-click description.
8. Type Opera between the description tags.
9. Select the code for the price element you have not modified and delete it.
10. Save your file.
11. In the Navigator view, right-click the XML file and select Validate XML File. The file is now valid and no errors appear in the Problems view for it.

The source code for your file should appear similar to the following:

The Design and Source views within the XML editor allow you to easily make changes to you XML file based on the constraints of the associated DTD. The grammar constraints option allows you to choose whether to apply the rules to the file at any given time.