Modding:XML File Format Primer
Lilith's Throne modding system loads in content as Extensible Markup Language (XML) text files. It's just text formatted to fit a certain structure, and they can be opened and edited by any text editor, though some will have tools like syntax highlighting and XML-checking tools to help catch mistakes.
Here's a dummy example, to show how things are structured:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<tag>
<element>text content</element>
<emptyTag/>
<cdataElement><![CDATA[CData Stuff]]></cdataElement>
<elementWithAttribute attribute="attribute value" secondAttribute="second value">this is also content</elementWithAttribute>
<emptyTagWithAttribue attribute="this is also an attribute value"/>
<outerElement>
<nestedElement attribute="yet another attribute">this is content too</nestedElement>
<nestedElement attribute="yet another attribute">contented for a second</nestedElement>
</outerElement>
</tag>
An XML file is arranged as elements, each having an opening tag <tag> and a closing tag </tag>.
The name of an element (which goes in the tag) follows a few simple rules:
- Must start with a letter or underscore ( _ )
- Cannot start with
xml - Are case sensitive!
- Cannot contain spaces!
- Can also have digits, hyphens, and periods, in addition to letters and underscores, but can't start with those (rule 1)
(Note: Most tag names used for LT are only letters with occasional numbers, and are usually in camelCase)
The stuff between the tags of an element, there may be content: <element>text content</element>. An element without content is usually entered as a self-closing tag ending in a slash: <emptyTag/>, or otherwise entered as tags with nothing between them: <tag></tag>. An element's content may be text or another element, which is called a child element: <element><childElement/></element>. Child elements can open with the same tag as others nested in the same parent.
Content for a tag in the form of <![CDATA[CData Stuff]]> is "character data", used to encapsulate text that may otherwise be interfere with the syntax of an XML document. For LT, it usually marks something that is sent to through a parser to perform scripting commands and/or displayed on screen as text.
Tags can also have attributes, which are key-value pairs included in the opening tag and formatted like: <tag key1="value1" key2="value2"></tag>. Each attribute in a tag must be unique.
