XML namespace

XML namespaces provide uniquely named elements and attributes in an XML document.

Description

XML namespaces are defined in a W3C recommendation.

Namespaces resolve ambiguity

An XML instance may contain element or attribute names from more than one XML vocabulary.

If each vocabulary is given a namespace, the ambiguity between identically named elements or attributes can be resolved.

Example

A simple example would be to consider an XML instance that contained references to a customer and an ordered product.

• Both the customer element and the product element could have a child element named id
• References to the id element would therefore be ambiguous
• Placing them in different namespaces resolves the ambiguity

See also

• Namespace (computing)
• XML

External Links

• XML namespace @ Wikipedia