A namespace is an important concept for XML documents. Namespaces enable the grouping and identification of elements within XML documents. This makes it possible to have two elements with the same name within different namespaces and ensures they are identified as unique. As namespaces are often long URIs, used to uniquely identify them, XML uses something called a namespace prefix, which is shorthand for identifying the namespace in Documents and XPath queries. You will often see XPath queries with namespace prefixes against XML elements.
Generally you will have at least the mvc:
prefix (full namespace URI = http://www.hyfinity.com/mvc
) defined, as this is used within the default eForm
document structure for the data. Note: For brevity, often, the XML document structures shown within the Bindings tab only show the element names. However, when you drag and drop elements the namespace prefixes are automatically applied.
Please note, namespaces are not mandatory and it is possible to have elements that do not belong to particular namespaces. In such cases, your XPaths may have namespace prefixes for some elements and not others.
WebMaker automatically imports all namespace definitions from XML documents you use in your application, which means you will not have to worry about namespaces and prefix set-up in most cases. Simply drag your fields as needed to create the bindings, or use the default bindings provided.
If you do need more control over the namespaces used in your application, then the Namespace Definitions section displays the namespaces that are currently defined. You can modify these definitions to suit your requirements.
When XML documents are parsed, not all namespaces will have prefixes defined. WebMaker generates prefixes of the form ns1
, ns2
, etc. for each namespace that it encounters. You can change these prefixes to suit your requirements.