Learning XML

2.4. Namespaces: ExpandingYour Vocabulary

What happens when you want to include elements or attributes from different document types? For example, you might want to put an equation encoded in the MathML language inside an XML document. You can't combine multiple DTDs for a single document, unfortunately, but no one says you have to use a DTD in XML. If you can survive without a DTD (and most browsers will tolerate documents without them), you can use a feature of XML called namespaces.

A namespace is a group of element and attribute names. You can declare that an element exists within a particular namespace and that it should be validated against that namespace's DTD. By appending a namespace prefix to an element or attribute name, you tell the parser which namespace it comes from.

Imagine, for example, that the English language is divided into namespaces corresponding to conceptual topics. We'll take two of these, say hardware and food. The topic hardware contains words such as hammer and bolt, while food has words like fruit and meat. Both namespaces contain the word nut, which has a different meaning in each context even though it's spelled the same in both. It really is two different words with the same name, but how can we express that fact without causing a namespace clash?

This same problem can occur in XML, where two XML objects in different name-spaces can have the same name, resulting in ambiguity about where they came from. The solution is to have each element ...