Stylus Studio XML Editor

Table of contents

Appendices

3 Attribute

xml:base Attribute

The attribute xml:base Must, May, etc. be inserted in XML documents to specify a base URI other than the base URI of the document or external entity. The value of this attribute is interpreted as a URI Reference as defined in RFC 2396 [RFC2396], after processing according to Section 3.1.

In namespace-aware XML processors, the "xml" prefix is bound to the namespace name http://www.w3.org/XML/1998/namespace as described in Namespaces in XML [XMLNS]. Note that xml:base can be still used by non-namespace-aware processors.

An example of xml:base in a simple document containing XLinks follows. XLink normatively references XML Base for interpretation of relative URI references in xlink:href attributes.

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<doc xml:base="http://example.org/today/"
     xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">
  <head>
    <title>Virtual Library</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <paragraph>See <link xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="new.xml">what's
      new</link>!</paragraph>
    <paragraph>Check out the hot picks of the day!</paragraph>
    <olist xml:base="/hotpicks/">
      <item>
        <link xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="pick1.xml">Hot Pick #1</link>
      </item>
      <item>
        <link xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="pick2.xml">Hot Pick #2</link>
      </item>
      <item>
        <link xlink:type="simple" xlink:href="pick3.xml">Hot Pick #3</link>
      </item>
    </olist>
  </body>
</doc>

The URIs in this example resolve to full URIs as follows:

  • "what's new" resolves to the URI "http://example.org/today/new.xml"

  • "Hot Pick #1" resolves to the URI "http://example.org/hotpicks/pick1.xml"

  • "Hot Pick #2" resolves to the URI "http://example.org/hotpicks/pick2.xml"

  • "Hot Pick #3" resolves to the URI "http://example.org/hotpicks/pick3.xml"