XML

Before JSON dominated the world, XML was the most popular format for data interchange. With the addition of many new specifications, XML became very complex, but it is a practical thing to understand how to process XML in case you need to.

XML processing in Delphi is based on building an in-memory representation of the XML file using XML parsers from different vendors. The key component for working with XML is TXMLDocument. XML parsing is considerably more difficult then JSON. TXMLDocument has a pluggable XML parser architecture and Delphi comes with a number of XML parser implementations from different vendors. There are different vendor implementations available depending on the target platform. Take a look at the following screenshot:

Let's have a look at how to implement writing and reading XML information from a file. In the New Items dialog, there is the Web Documents category, where you can find a wizard to create a new XML file. We can add an XML file directly to our FavoritesDemo...