XML Hacks

This is my favorite O'Reilly book. The scope covers everything you can imagine for working with XML. I really like the depth of information in every hack ('hack' in the sense of ways to get something done). Whenever a tool is mentioned, there is often additional info about related tools that do similar functionality and why you would choose one or the other. Each hack is like a well-crafted short story. At first I glanced through the book. It's amazing how people have solved so many common tasks to make working with XML automated and flexible. It's fun to look at the titles of each hack and see the illustrations. I found myself saying "That's a technique that'll come in handy someday." Then I found myself marking up the tools and applications mentioned that did nifty things that will be good quivers in my XML toolkit. Finally this book provided some invaluable techniques when I needed to do a few one-time XML tasks. I needed to extract information from a humongous XML file. I was able to extract the text of all elements into a nice tidy HTML page. Another time I created a tree diagram with custom bullet list symbols for the two types of items in the tree using CSS to format the XML (I'd heard it was possible, but didn't know how to do it). And if you're looking for a quick explanation and examples for some XML technology, like XQuery, XSLT, SVG, XPointer, XLINK, RSS, some recommendations on commercial and free XML tools, XForms, XHTML, working with Microsoft Office documents as XML or for importing into Word or Excel and many more, then I recommend getting this useful, information-packed and handy reference book. You'll grab it off the shelf whenever you want to do something efficiently in XML without reinventing the wheel.

I'm familiar with XML and have found this book to be helpful. Not a book to learn XML, it is a place to pick up new information that can help to complete a toolbox already in the making. There were some hints to bridge gaps between what I want to do and what I know how to do. I plan to have it nearby to make my work easier and faster.

If you've ever tried to go to a web page automatically and then parse the information by examining the string you got back, you can appreciate XML. While not perfect XML is probably the most practical option for packaging data that can be read by both humans and computers. As with the other O'Reilly Hacks books, this one contains 100 hints, tips and suggestions on on how to get more out of XML. I find that whenever I read one of their Hacks books I pick up something useful that just happens to fit the problem I'm working on at the moment. This one was no exception. Great idea! Great Books.

Very useful if you already deal with XML and need help with occasional tricky points. While you could try to learn XML from this book, I wouldn't suggest it. Whereas, if you already have some familiarity with DTDs, schemas and other topics like SOAP and Open Office, then the book is potentially far more useful. Perhaps the most intricate parts of the book deal with using XSLT to process XML documents. Trouble is, the XSLT usage can be very convoluted and non-obvious, unless you know it thoroughly. The hacks Fitzgerald describe that involve XSLT are neat. But, perhaps by necessity, they only hint at the depths beneath. Overall, the book shows the ever-growing scope of XML. From interacting with SQL databases to the Microsoft Office suite, to news feeds like RSS. The book is excellent motivation for gaining fluency in XML.

O'Reilly has delivered another excellent title in the Hacks series. This time it's XML Hacks by Michael Fitzgerald. While not as "fun" as, say, the Digital Photography Hacks book, it's just as useful if working with XML is something you do as part of your IT job. Chapter breakout: Looking At XML Documents; Creating XML Documents; Transforming XML Documents; XML Vocabularies; Defining XML Vocabularies with Schema Language; RSS and Atom; Advanced XML Hacks For those not familiar with the Hacks series, each book contains 100 tips, techniques, and plain cool things you can do with the technology. Some will be things you already know, some will be things you aren't quite ready for yet, and others will be ones that you just can't wait to try out as they solve a problem you've been living with for far too long. There were two areas I liked in this book. The Creating and Transforming chapters introduce a number of software packages, both commercial and free, that can help you manage the process of working with your XML files in something more elegant than Notepad. The RSS and Atom chapter is also cool as I use RSS in my blog feed, and this will help me understand and enhance that feed. I've yet to find a bad Hacks title, and this is no exception. Very good material.