FluentDOM 5 + XML Namespaces

FluentDOM 5 allows to register namespaces on the DOM document class. These are not the namespaces of a loaded document, but a definition of namespaces for your programming logic.

Namespaces In An XML File

People mistake the namespace prefixes for the namespaces often. The namespace definitions are the xmlns:* Attributes. Let's take a really simple example:

<atom:feed xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"/>

This is a feed element in the Atom namespace. The actual namespace is "http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom". Because this would be difficult to read and write the prefix/alias 'atom' is defined for the namespace. 

You can read the element name as '{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}:feed'

It is possible to define a default namespace for elements in an XML. 

<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"/> 

This should still be interpreted as '{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}:feed'. The namespace prefix in the source document is not relevant. You need a way to match the namespace itself and not the alias.

Hint 1: Namespace prefixes can be redefined on any element node in the document.

Hint 2: Attributes always need a prefix to use a namespace. Any attribute without a prefix is in the "none/empty" namespace.

Namespaces in XPath

An XPath expresssion that could match the Atom feed element would need to use a prefix and needs a way to resolve that prefix into the actual namespace. 

A PHP Example:

$xpath = new DOMXpath($document);
$xpath->registerNamespace('a', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$nodes = $xpath->evaluate('/a:feed');

In PHP the DOMXpath class provides the evaluate() method and the namespace resolver. You register your own namespace prefixes. '/a:feed' gets resolved to '/{http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom}:feed'. The prefixes in the document and the expression can be different, but the resolved namespace has to be the same.

A JavaScript example:

var xmlns = {
  namespaces : {
    'a' : 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom'
  },
  lookupNamespaceURI : function(prefix) {
    return this.namespaces[prefix] || null;
  }
};
var nodes = xmlDocument.evaluate('/a:feed', xmlDocument, xmlns, XPathResult.ANY_TYPE, null); 

In JavaScript the document object provides the evaluate() method and the namespace resolver is an argument for it. This will work in most of the current browsers, but not IE. 

Namespaces in FluentDOM

In FluentDOM 5 the document and the element classes both have an evaluate() method. To define your namespace mapping you register the namespace on the document object:

$document->registerNamespace('a', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom')
$nodes = $document->evaluate('/a:feed');

Now because the document has a way to resolve namespaces, it can do this for other methods, too. Basically for all methods a have a namespace aware variant, like 'createElement()' and 'createElementNS()' or 'setAttribute()' and 'setAttributeNS()'. If FluentDOM can resolve a tagname it will call the namespace aware variant of the method.

// Standard DOM
$feed = $document->createElementNS(
  'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom', 'atom:feed'
);
// FluentDOM
$document->registerNamespace('atom', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$feed = $document->createElement('atom:feed');

Default Namespace 

FluentDOM adds the concept of a default element namespace, too.

// Standard DOM
$feed = $document->createElementNS(
  'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom', 'feed'
);
// FluentDOM
$document->registerNamespace('#default', 'http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom');
$feed = $document->createElement('feed');

appendElement()

FluentDOM\Document and FluentDOM\Element implement an appendElement() method. It is a shortcut for serveral methods. It creates the element, adds attributes and a text node and appends it to the parent node. Together with the namespace handling, creating an XML document becomes a lot simpler. You can find an example in the wiki.