iProv XML File Format


XML is a file format where items are marked up with tags appearing between <angle-brackets>. You can read about XML on Wikipedia, but basically if you open and look at the file you'll get the idea.

The nice thing about XML is that it's human-readable. The not-so-nice thing about it is that even though you can tell what's going on, it's a pain to read and edit by hand.

So most likely working on this file is going to take some patience, and believe me, that patience is appreciated. If you know of or discover any good, free tools for editing the file (other than the ones mentioned on previous pages), please let me know and I'll post about them here.


Overall structure

The file is structured as follows (indenting added for visual niceness):

<dataroot>
    <items>
        <itemName> ... </itemName>
        <itemText> ... </itemText>
        <variations> ... </variations>
        <aka> ... </aka>
        <seeAlso> ... </seeAlso>
        <tags> ... </tags>
    </items>
    
    <items>
        <itemName> ... </itemName>
        <itemText> ... </itemText>
        <variations> ... </variations>
        <aka> ... </aka>
        <seeAlso> ... </seeAlso>
        <tags> ... </tags>
    </items>
    
    <items>
        <itemName> ... </itemName>
        <itemText> ... </itemText>
        <variations> ... </variations>
        <aka> ... </aka>
        <seeAlso> ... </seeAlso>
        <tags> ... </tags>
    </items>

    ...
</dataroot>


Variations


Also known as

The aka field can be used to list aliases for games. The names should be separated by commas.

On the iPhone application, the aliases will show up as their own entries but redirect when selected to the main entry.

Make sure the name you use isn't used anywhere else in the file! Lots of names are used differently in different regions, so make sure you aren't conflicting with something already in place.


See also

This is a comma-separated list of other entries in the file that are related to the item.

Make sure the name you add exists as the name of an item in the file, and is spelled correctly! Only use the proper itemName names of entries, not a named variation or a value from the aka field.


Tags

Tags are one of the most useful features of the database. This is a comma-separated list of short, lowercase terms that can be used to group and identify sets of similar games.

Guidelines for tagging:

Some common tags, and when you should use them:

Most of the other tags should be self-explanatory.


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