Generating XML file from XSD causes unwanted prefix on root node

Question

I am using XML spy to automatically generate an XML file from an XSD. However, it always seems to prefix my root element with n1: or n2: e.g. it would generate something like to following

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<n2:EmployeeData>
   <Employee>
     <name>xyz</name>
     <dateOfBirth>10.10.10</dateOfBirth>
     <email>a@a.com</email>
   </Employee>
</n2:EmployeeData>

I would like it to generate the following:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<EmployeeData>
   <Employee>
     <name>xyz</name>
     <dateOfBirth>10.10.10</dateOfBirth>
     <email>a@a.com</email>
   </Employee>
</EmployeeData>

Your first example is invalid XML, it wouldn't generate that. The `ns2` prefix must be defined. — skaffman, Jul 06 '11 at 22:33

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Jul 06 '11 at 22:42

2

That is similar to when in Java JAXB NamespacePrefixMapper is not set. If you declare namespace uri and prefix then XML will be generated with the right prefix (or no prefix) and namespace uri. Check in XML Spy has an option for setting namespace prefixes.

answered Jul 06 '11 at 22:42

padis

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My XSD already has a targetNamespace defined e.g. targetNamespace="http://www.mycompany.com/XMLSchema/XYZ" . However, when I copy and paste this url into IE, I get a page not found error. Do you think this is what could be causing my issue ? – mh377 Jul 07 '11 at 18:12
@MTH No, probably not. Somehow you need to tell XMLSpy that you want the default namespace in the document to your namespace - that is, it should insert into the root `xmlns="mycompany.com/XMLSchema/XYZ"`. – Ed Staub Jul 09 '11 at 03:52

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 11 '11 at 15:16

First of all: namespaces are a fundamental concept in XML. If you are not familiar with namespaces, please take time to learn and understand them. Even though namespaces are URIs, they do not need to (but can) point to any existing web page. They are just unique identifiers.

Because your XML Schema has a target namespace, the root element of an instance document must be in that namespace. You can use some other namespace prefix in your instance document if you want, just make sure that you also have a namespace definition that binds your prefix to that required target namespace URI. Like @skaffman commented, the XML you posted is actually not well-formed, because it uses a namespace prefix without a prefix-to-namespace mapping. Another way to deal with your issue is to remove the prefix and define a default namespace in the root element. If your instance document shouldn't be in any namespace, then your schema is incorrect and it should be fixed by removing the targetNamespace attribute.

By the way, in your document only the root element belongs to a namespace. This is not a common practice and I guess that in this case such result was caused by an unintentional feature in your schema document. By default, only the elements that are declared globally in the schema document will be in the target namespace. This can be changed by setting elementFormDefault="qualified" attribute on the <xs:schema> element. This attribute makes sure that also elements that locally are declared in this schema do belong to the target namespace. The default value for that attribute is false, which is applied if the attribute is missing.

Generating XML file from XSD causes unwanted prefix on root node

2 Answers2