XML formats

A list of a site's URLs with optional freshness hints, read by every major search engine. One <urlset> root, one <url> per page, <loc> mandatory.

.xml · .xml.gz

A sitemap of sitemaps, used once a site outgrows a single 50,000-URL file. Indexes cannot nest: every child must be a sitemap, not another index.

.xml · .xml.gz

The most widely deployed syndication format: namespace-free at its core, extension-heavy in practice, and unopinionated about almost everything.

.xml · .rss

The IETF-standardised syndication format: namespaced from the root, strictly typed, and unambiguous about dates in a way RSS 2.0 never was.

.xml · .atom

The message envelope for SOAP web services — still the backbone of banking, logistics and telecom, with its version carried by the namespace URI.

.xml

The dominant XML schema language: namespace-aware, richly typed, and itself written in XML — so schemas diff and version-track like the payloads they govern.

.xsd

The machine-readable contract for a SOAP service: operations, messages, bindings and endpoints, with an inline XSD describing its own types.

.wsdl · .xml

A transformation program written in XML, used to reshape one XML vocabulary into another — common wherever a partner payload meets an internal format.

.xsl · .xslt

A vector image format that is genuine XML, and therefore both diffable and a security surface: scripts and external references travel inside the file.

.svg · .svgz

A nested outline format whose meaning lives entirely in attributes, used almost universally for exporting and importing feed subscriptions.

.opml · .xml

A graph serialisation in XML, where identity lives in rdf:about and nesting means relationship. Also the real format behind documents labelled RSS 1.0.

.rdf · .xml

The interchange format for GPS waypoints, routes and recorded tracks — three shapes that look alike, and that devices disagree about which to emit.

.gpx

An OGC standard for geographic annotation: placemarks, geometry and the styles that render them, originating in Google Earth and still shaped by it.

.kml · .kmz

The localisation interchange format that carries source text, its translation and how far that translation has got, one <trans-unit> per string.

.xlf · .xliff

The OASIS invoice document behind Peppol and most European e-invoicing mandates, splitting its vocabulary across three namespaces you must all declare.

.xml

JUnit test-result XML used by CI systems: suites contain cases, and failures, errors, or skips are child elements rather than status attributes.

.xml

Maven's project model: coordinates, dependencies, plugins, repositories, and inherited build configuration under one namespaced <project> root.

.xml

A SAML 2.0 response carrying status and one or more identity assertions, usually signed and transported through a browser binding.

.xml

Apple's XML serialization for dictionaries, arrays, strings, numbers, dates, data, and booleans under a versioned <plist> wrapper.

.plist

A semantic vocabulary for technical books, articles, references, procedures, code listings, and cross-references.

.xml · .dbk

The publishing interchange for journal articles, separating front matter, article body, and back matter such as references and acknowledgements.

.xml

The interchange format for Western music notation, representing scores part-by-part or timewise for notation and performance software.

.musicxml · .xml · .mxl

The XML vocabulary for mathematical notation, with presentation markup for layout and content markup for mathematical meaning.

.mml · .mathml · .xml

The paged-media vocabulary produced by publishing transformations and consumed by formatters to create PDF or print output.

.fo · .xml