Property Names and XML

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

When an application accesses a Web Store property by using HTTP 1.1 extensions, the property name, when placed into an XML stream, is disassembled into its namespace and name parts and then reassembled when taken out of the stream and saved to the item in the Web Store. This happens transparently within the WebDAV service itself. The following rules are used to identify the namespace and the name portions of a fully qualified property name when disassembling it for transport over HTTP:

• Valid URL and URN schema separator characters, that delimit namespace names from property names, are as follows:
  slash mark (/)
  colon (:)
  semicolon (;)
  number sign (#)
  question mark (?).
• The namespace name is the entire string to the left of the separator character, and the separator character itself. However, if the separator character is a number sign (#) then the namespace name does not include the separator character.
• The property name is the string to the right of the separator character.

The following table shows how a fully qualified property name is disassembled into its parts.