Namespace Scope

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Namespace declarations are scoped using an element container. In the default declaration example, all unqualified elements (without explicit namespace on the element) within the "BOOK" element belong to the "urn:BookLovers.org:BookInfo" namespace. In the following example, notice that all unqualified elements within the "table" element are scoped to the default namespace "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40". On the "details" tag, the default namespace is set to "urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo". All unqualified tags within the "details" element are scoped to this namespace.

<Beers>
  <!-- the default namespace is now that of HTML -->
  <table xmlns="http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40">
    <tr><td>Name</td><td>Origin</td><td>Description</td></tr>
    <tr>
      <!-- drop the HTML namespace inside table cells -->
      <td><brandName xmlns="urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo">Huntsman</brandName></td>
      <td><origin xmlns="urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo">Bath, UK</origin></td>
      <td>
        <details xmlns="urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo">
          <class>Bitter</class>
          <hop>Fuggles</hop>
          <pro>Wonderful hop, light alcohol, good summer beer</pro>
          <con>Fragile; excessive variance pub to pub</con>
        </details>
      </td>
    </tr>
  </table>
</Beers>

The following table shows the elements and attributes of the above XML example and their properties within the XML object model.

Node type	nodeName	namespaceURI	prefix	baseName
ELEMENT	Beers			Beers
ELEMENT	table	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		table
ATTRIBUTE	xmlns		xmlns
ELEMENT	tr	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		tr
ELEMENT	td	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		td
ELEMENT	td	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		td
ELEMENT	td	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		td
ELEMENT	tr	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		tr
ELEMENT	td	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		td
ELEMENT	brandName	urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo		brandName
ATTRIBUTE	xmlns		xmlns
ELEMENT	td	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		td
ELEMENT	origin	urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo		origin
ATTRIBUTE	xmlns		xmlns
ELEMENT	td	http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40		td
ELEMENT	details	urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo		details
ATTRIBUTE	xmlns		xmlns
ELEMENT	class	urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo		class
ELEMENT	hop	urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo		hop
ELEMENT	pro	urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo		pro
ELEMENT	con	urn:beerstuff.org:brandinfo		con

The namespace shorthands are valid within the element in which they are defined. In the explicit declaration example, the shorthands "bk" and "money" are valid only within the "bk:BOOK" element.