Class Namespace

object --+
         |
        Namespace

Utility class creating and testing elements with a namespace.

Internally, namespace URIs are encoded in the QName of any element or attribute, the namespace URI being enclosed in curly braces. This class helps create and test these strings.

A Namespace object is instantiated with the namespace URI.

>>> html = Namespace('http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml')
>>> html
Namespace('http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml')
>>> html.uri
u'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'

The Namespace object can than be used to generate QName objects with that namespace:

>>> html.body
QName('http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body')
>>> html.body.localname
u'body'
>>> html.body.namespace
u'http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml'

The same works using item access notation, which is useful for element or attribute names that are not valid Python identifiers:

>>> html['body']
QName('http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}body')

A Namespace object can also be used to test whether a specific QName belongs to that namespace using the in operator:

>>> qname = html.body
>>> qname in html
True
>>> qname in Namespace('http://www.w3.org/2002/06/xhtml2')
False