Help with DTD

P Keshav · September 11th, 2003, 12:09 PM

Hi,

I am trying to write a DTD for an element with any children (as long as it is wellformed XML).
eg: <boolean>
<somechild>..</somechild>
</boolean>
where the DTD has no knowledge of either the key or value of somechild. <!ELEMENT boolean ANY> did not work (using Xerces parser for C++).

Thanks
P Keshav

armmarti · September 12th, 2003, 12:05 AM

Hi,

When you write <!ELEMENT boolean ANY> in the DTD, it means that the content of the element type "boolean" can be anything(well-balanced XML snippet). But it doesn't mean that you can ommit the declaration of some descendant element of "boolean". For example, suppose you have the DTD declaration:

Code:

...
<!ELEMENT boolean ANY>
...

and XML document like this:

Code:

...
<boolean>
   <child1>content1<child11>content11</child11></child1>
</boolean>
...

Then you have to declare both "child1" and "child11" in the DTD. The only thing the "ANY" gives you is that the declared element is free to have any well-formed content, but it doesn't let you to miss element declarations of its descendant elements.

Regards,
Armen