What Is An XML File (And How Do I Open One)?

Author: Brady Gavin / Source: howtogeek.com

A file with the .xml file extension is an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file. These are really just plain text files that use custom tags to describe the structure and other features of the document.

What is XML?

XML is a markup language created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to define a syntax for encoding documents that both humans and machines could read.

It does this through the use of tags that define the structure of the document, as well as how the document should be stored and transported.

It’s probably easiest to compare it to another markup language with which you might be familiar—the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) used to encode web pages. HTML uses a pre-defined set of markup symbols (short codes) that describe the format of content on a web page. For example, the following simple HTML code uses tags to make some words bold and some italic:

This is how you make <b>bold text</b> and this is how you make <i>italic text</i>

The thing that differentiates XML, though, is that it’s extensible. XML doesn’t have a predefined markup language, like HTML does. Instead, XML allows users to create their own markup symbols to describe content, making an unlimited and self-defining symbol set.

Essentially, HTML is a language that focuses on the presentation of content, while XML is a dedicated data-description language used to store data.

XML is often used as the basis for other document formats—hundreds, in fact. Here are a few you might recognize:

• RSS and ATOM both describe how reader apps handle web feeds.
• Microsoft .NET uses XML for its configuration files.
• Microsoft Office 2007 and later use XML as the basis for document structure.
  That’s what the “X” means in the .DOCX Word document format, for example, and it’s also used in Excel (XLSX files) and PowerPoint (PPTX files).

So, if you have an XML file, that doesn’t necessarily tell you what app it’s intended for use with. And typically, you won’t need to worry about it, unless you’re the one actually designing the XML files.

How Do I Open One?

There are a few ways you can open an XML file directly. You can open and edit them with any text editor, view them with any web browser, or use a website that lets you view, edit, and even convert them to other formats.

Use a Text Editor If You Work With XML Files Regularly

Since XML files are really just text files, you can open them in any text editor. The thing is, a lot of text editors—like Notepad—just…

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