XML stands for Extensible Markup Language, and it is a standard that defines a set of rules to encode information created by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The major advantage of XML is that it is both human and machine readable, which contributes to its success not only on the Web but also in game development.

We assume you have basic knowledge of XML, but take a look at the W3C introduction tutorial if this is the first time you have come across the standard. It is available at http://www.w3schools.com/xml/xml_whatis.asp.

XML's flexibility and hierarchical tree-oriented nature made many game studios use it to represent their data, such as configuration files, level layout, animation, and so on. Keeping the code separated from data makes it more reusable, allows rapid iteration through hot reloading, and lets nontechnical people tweak aspects of the game.

As you might have expected, Libgdx features its own XML parsing utilities, and we will show you how to leverage...