How do I comment out a block of tags in XML?

Question

How do I comment out a block of tags in XML?

I.e. How can I comment out <staticText> and everything inside it, in the code below?

  <detail>
    <band height="20">
      <staticText>
        <reportElement x="180" y="0" width="200" height="20"/>
        <text><![CDATA[Hello World!]]></text>
      </staticText>
    </band>
  </detail>

I could use <!-- staticText--> but that's just for single tags (as what I know), like // in Java and C. I would like something more like how /** comment **/ can be used in Java and C, so I can comment out longer blocks of XML code.

Answer 1

You can use that style of comment across multiple lines:

<detail>
    <band height="20">
    <!--
      Hello,
         I am a multi-line XML comment
         <staticText>
            <reportElement x="180" y="0" width="200" height="20"/>
            <text><![CDATA[Hello World!]]></text>
          </staticText>
      -->
     </band>
</detail>

Answer 2

Actually, you can use the <!--...--> format with multi-lines or tags:

<!--
  ...
  ...
  ...
-->

Answer 3

If you ask, because you got errors with the <!-- --> syntax, it's most likely the CDATA section (and there the ]]> part), that then lies in the middle of the comment. It should not make a difference, but ideal and real world can be quite a bit apart, sometimes (especially when it comes to XML processing).

Try to change the ]]>, too:

  <!--detail>
    <band height="20">
      <staticText>
        <reportElement x="180" y="0" width="200" height="20"/>
        <text><![CDATA[Hello World!]--><!--]></text>
      </staticText>
    </band>
  </detail-->

Another thing, that comes to mind: If the content of your XML somewhere contains two hyphens, the comment immediately ends there:

<!-- <a> This is strange -- but true!</a> -->
-------------------------^ comment ends here

That's quite a common pitfall. It's inherited from the way SGML handles comments. (Read the XML spec on this topic)