Elements are fundamental building blocks in XML. Element
declarations provide value constraints, provide a description that
can be used for validation, establish constraining relationships between
related elements and attributes, and control the substitution of elements.
The following instructions were written for the Resource
perspective, but they will also work in many other perspectives.
To
add an element, complete the following steps:
- To add an element, in the Design view, right-click the
content model (sequence, choice, or all element) you want to work
with and click Add Element. The
element appears attached to the content model in the Design view.
- In the Design view, select the element, and click the
current (default) name of the element, which puts you in direct editing
mode, then type the new Name and press enter.
- In the Design view, click the current (default) element
type and select a type from the menu. Alternately, you can select
browse to invoke the Set Type dialog for more options. The
Set Type dialog lists all built-in and user-defined types currently
available. You can change the Scope of the
list by selecting one of the following options:
- Workspace: lists all of the types available
in your workspace.
- Enclosing Project: lists all of the types
available in the project that contains your file.
- (Default) Current Resource: list all of
the types available in your current file.
- Working Sets: list all the types available
within the selected working set.
- (Optional) In the Properties view, select the appropriate
value in the Minimum Occurrence field.
This is the number of times the element can appear in an instance
document. If you want the element to be optional, select 0.
Otherwise, select 1.
- (Optional) Select the appropriate value in the Maximum
Occurrence field. This is the maximum number
of times the element can appear in an instance document. Select unbounded to
indicate there is no maximum number of occurrences.
- Click the Documentation tab if you
want to provide any information about this element. The Documentation page
is used for human readable material, such as a description.
- Click the Extensions tab if you
want to add application information elements to your annotations of
schema components. The Extensions page
allows you to specify the schema and add XML content to your annotations.
You can add a content model to an element, which is the representation
of any data that can be contained inside the element. For more information
about working with content models, refer to the related tasks.