XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Chapter 4. Namespaces

Namespaces have two purposes in XML:

1. To distinguish between elements and attributes from different vocabularies with different meanings that happen to share the same name

2. To group all the related elements and attributes from a single XML application together so that software can easily recognize them

The first purpose is easier to explain and grasp, but the second purpose is more important in practice.

Namespaces are implemented by attaching a prefix to each element and attribute. Each prefix is mapped to a URI by an xmlns:prefix attribute. Default URIs can also be provided for elements that don’t have a prefix. Default namespaces are declared by xmlns attributes. Elements and attributes that are attached to the same URI are in the same namespace. Elements from many XML applications are identified by standard URIs.

In an XML 1.1 document, an Internationalized Resource Identifier (IRI) can be used instead of a URI. An IRI is just like a URI except it can contain non-ASCII characters such as é and π. In practice, parsers don’t check that namespace names are legal URIs in XML 1.0, so the distinction is mostly academic.