Tuesday, March 19, 2024

XML and .NET Namespaces Collide in XAML

Introduction

The term namespace is overloaded: the same word has
different meanings in different contexts. (Or does that mean
it’s polymorphic? Hmm…) In .NET, a namespace is a place
where classes and other namespaces are logically contained–
a bit like folders in a file system. And, also like folders,
the namespace defines the context in which a class name must
be unique. You can have a MyClass in ThisNamespace and a
different MyClass in ThatNamespace, but you can’t have two
different MyClass classes in the same namespace. Beyond
defining the context of unique naming .NET namespaces
provide a logical organization to the tens of thousands of
classes in the .NET Framework.


But in XML, namespace are different… In fact, it’s best
to completely forget about .NET namespaces when you think
about XML namespaces. An XML namespace is a unique name
given to the schema being used in an XML file. A schema is
the “grammar and vocabulary” of the XML file–it defines
what tags and attributes are valid and how they should be
organized into elements and sub-elements. If Microsoft had
created XML in the beginning, schema names might have been
implemented as GUID’s because that’s essentially all they
are, a unique series of characters used to name the schema,
assuring that it never conflicts with the name of another
schema. But XML doesn’t use GUID’s. Instead it uses URL’s
(Technically it uses the more broadly defined URI, but
that’s not essential here).


When you see a URL, you immediately think of a Web
address. But XML namespace URL’s don’t necessarily point to
a real location on the Internet. They are not to be
understood as addresses, even though they look like one.
When you begin to create your own schema, you select a
domain that you own and then add any combination of “virtual
folders” after the domain name to specifically identify your
schema. Since you own the domain, no one else will use that
domain when creating a different schema. And you are
responsible for seeing that no two schemas you create have
the same “virtual folders” after the domain name. For
example, if I own edgequest.com, I can name my schema:


http://edgequest.com/my/cool/employee/schema

Once you understand that .NET namespaces and XML
namespaces are completely different concepts, you might be
surprised when you first come to XAML. XAML combines the
concept of XML namespaces with .NET namespaces.


XAML is usually discussed in the context of Windows
Presentation Foundation (WPF). It is the schema that is used
to define what a WPF form looks like, what controls it
contains and how they are arranged. But XAML is more than a
user interface schema. It is actually a way of representing
and using .NET classes in XML. This approach makes it easy
to quickly define objects and set their properties while
writing little or no code in C# or VB. For many applications
(including UI definition), a XAML file is much more
efficient and easily maintainable than code written in
traditional languages.


So if you are going to use XAML to work with .NET
classes, you must specify which .NET namespaces you want to
work with–much like you do with a using in C# or an Imports
in VB. XAML uses XML namespaces to do this. Because, in
essence, what you are doing by identifying the .NET
namespace is specifying the schema for this XAML file.
Syntax to access and use the System.Collections
namespace, for example, might look like this:


<WINDOW …
XMLNS_COLL=”clr-namesapce:System.Collections;assembly=mscorlib”>
<COLL:ARRAYLIST>
<SYSTEM.STRING>Brave New World</SYSTEM.STRING>
<SYSTEM.STRING>The Scarlet Letter</SYSTEM.STRING>
<SYSTEM.STRING>Huckleberry Finn</SYSTEM.STRING>
<SYSTEM.STRING>Foundation</SYSTEM.STRING>
</COLL:ARRAYLIST>

</WINDOW>

As you can see, the XML namespace begins with clr-
namespace: followed by the fully-qualified .NET namespace.
The assembly clause at the end wouldn’t actually be
necessary in this case, it’s only required if the namespace
is not in a well-known assembly. Once the namespace is
identified, you are free to use classes it contains, like
the ArrayList, in this case.


In WPF, you can identify the typical WPF namespaces and
get a whole slew of namespaces available to you
automatically. But if you want to refer to a different well-
known assembly or you want to use classes from your own
projects, XAML’s special use of the XML namespace syntax
makes it possible.

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