XML Base

xml-base-&year;&MMDD;

W3C Candidate Recommendation

&day;&month;&year; &XMLBase; HTML XML http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-xmlbase-20000607 http://www.w3.org/TR/2000/WD-xmlbase-20000221 http://www.w3.org/TR/1999/WD-xmlbase-19991220 &LatestXMLBase; Jonathan Marsh Microsoft jmarsh@microsoft.com

This XML Base specification is a Candidate Recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium. (For background on this work, please see the XML Activity Statement.) This specification is considered stable by the XML Linking Working Group .

The Working Group invites implementation feedback during this period. Comments on this document should be sent to the public mailing list www-xml-linking-comments@w3.org (archive) by December 8 2000.

A list of current W3C Recommendations and other technical documents can be found at http://www.w3.org/TR.

This document proposes a facility, similar to that of HTML BASE, for defining base URIs for parts of XML documents.

English November 11, 1999: Created v0.1. November 18, 1999: v0.2 Changed xml:base to xbase:base. December 2, 1999: v0.3 Changed xbase:base back to xml:base. December 3, 1999: v0.4 Minor editorial changes. February 10, 2000: v0.6 Removed remaining issues. May 24, 2000: v0.7 Integrated Disposition of Comments resolutions, prepared for second Last Call. August 30, 2000: Final modifications requested by W3C staff for CR.

Introduction

The XML Linking Language defines Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 constructs to describe links between resources. One of the stated requirements on XLink is to support HTML linking constructs in a generic way. The HTML BASE element is one such construct which the XLink Working Group has considered. BASE allows authors to explicitly specify a document's base URI for the purpose of resolving relative URIs in links to external images, applets, form-processing programs, style sheets, and so on.

This document describes a mechanism for providing base URI services to XLink, but as a modular specification so that other XML applications benefiting from additional control over relative URIs but not built upon XLink can also make use of it. The syntax consists of a single XML attribute named xml:base.

The deployment of XML Base is through normative reference by new specifications, for example XLink and the XML Infoset. Applications and specifications built upon these new technologies will natively support XML Base. The behavior of xml:base attributes in applications based on specifications that do not have direct or indirect normative reference to XML Base is undefined.

Terminology

The key words must, must not, required, shall, shall not, should, should not, recommended, may, and optional in this specification are to be interpreted as described in .

The terms base URI and relative URI are used in this specification as they are defined in .

xml:base Attribute

The attribute xml:base may 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 , 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 . 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.

Virtual Library See what's new! Check out the hot picks of the day! Hot Pick #1 Hot Pick #2 Hot Pick #3 ]]>

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"

URI Reference Encoding and Escaping

The set of characters allowed in xml:base attributes is the same as for XML, namely . However, some Unicode characters are disallowed from URI references, and thus processors must encode and escape these characters to obtain a valid URI reference from the attribute value.

The disallowed characters include all non-ASCII characters, plus the excluded characters listed in Section 2.4 of , except for the number sign (#) and percent sign (%) characters and the square bracket characters re-allowed in . Disallowed characters must be escaped as follows:

Each disallowed character is converted to UTF-8 as one or more bytes.

Any bytes corresponding to a disallowed character are escaped with the URI escaping mechanism (that is, converted to %HH, where HH is the hexadecimal notation of the byte value).

The original character is replaced by the resulting character sequence.

Resolving Relative URIs Relation to RFC 2396

RFC 2396 provides for base URI information to be embedded within a document. The rules for determining the base URI can be summarized as follows (highest priority to lowest):

The base URI is embedded in the document's content.

The base URI is that of the encapsulating entity (message, document, or none).

The base URI is the URI used to retrieve the entity.

The base URI is defined by the context of the application.

The term "entity" in points #2 and #3 above uses the RFC 2396 meaning of the term. Elsewhere in this document the term "entity" is used in the XML sense.

This document specifies the details of rule #1 for embedding base URI information in the specific case of XML documents.

Granularity of base URI information

Relative URIs appearing in an XML document are always resolved relative to either an element, a document entity, or an external entity. There is no provision for finer granularity, such as per-attribute, per-character, or per-entity base information. Neither internal entities, whether declared in the internal subset or in an external DTD, nor freestanding text (text not enclosed in an element) in an external entity, are considered to set a base URI separate from the base URI in scope for the entity reference.

The base URI of a document entity or an external entity is determined by RFC 2396 rules, namely, that the base URI is the URI used to retrieve the document entity or external entity.

The base URI of an element is:

the base URI specified by an xml:base attribute on the element, if one exists, otherwise

the base URI of the element's parent element within the document or external entity, if one exists, otherwise

the base URI of the document entity or external entity containing the element.

Matching URIs with base URIs

The base URI corresponding to a given relative URI appearing in an XML document is determined as follows:

The base URI for a URI reference appearing in text content is the base URI of the element containing the text.

The base URI for a URI reference appearing in an xml:base attribute is the base URI of the parent element of the element bearing the xml:base attribute, if one exists, otherwise the base URI of the document entity or external entity containing the element.

The base URI for a URI reference appearing in any other attribute value, including default attribute values, is the base URI of the element bearing the attribute.

The base URI for a URI reference appearing in the content of a processing instruction is the base URI of the parent element of the processing instruction, if one exists, otherwise the base URI of the document entity or external entity containing the processing instruction.

The presence of xml:base attributes might lead to unexpected results in the case where the attribute value is provided, not directly in the XML document entity, but via a default attribute declared in an external entity. Such declarations might not be read by software which is based on a non-validating XML processor. Many XML applications fail to require validating processors. For correct operation with such applications, xml:base values should be provided either directly or via default attributes declared in the internal subset of the DTD.

Conformance

An application conforms to XML Base if it calculates base URIs in accordance with the conditions set forth in this specification.

References RFC 2119: Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels. Internet Engineering Task Force, 1997. RFC 2279: UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646. Internet Engineering Task Force, 1998. RFC 2396: Uniform Resource Identifiers. Internet Engineering Task Force, 1995. RFC 2732: Format for Literal IPv6 Addresses in URL's. Internet Engineering Task Force, 1999. The Unicode Standard. The Unicode Consortium. Tim Bray, Jean Paoli, and C.M. Sperberg-McQueen, editors. Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0. World Wide Web Consortium, 1998. Tim Bray, Dave Hollander, and Andrew Layman, editors. Namespaces in XML. Textuality, Hewlett-Packard, and Microsoft. World Wide Web Consortium, 1999.

References Dave Raggett, Arnaud Le Hors, Ian Jacobs, editors. HTML 4.01 Specification. World Wide Web Consortium, 1999. Steve DeRose, Eve Maler, David Orchard, and Ben Trafford, editors. XML Linking Language (XLink). World Wide Web Consortium, 2000. Paul V. Biron, Ashok Malhotra, editors. XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes. World Wide Web Consortium Working Draft. Steven Pemberton, et al. XHTML(TM) 1.0: The Extensible HyperText Markup Language. World Wide Web Consortium, 2000. John Cowan and David Megginson, editors. XML Information Set. World Wide Web Consortium, 1999. James Clark and Steven DeRose, editors. XML Path Language World Wide Web Consortium, 1999. James Clark, editor. XSL Transformations. World Wide Web Consortium, 1999.

Impacts on Other Standards

XML Base defines a mechanism for embedding base URI information within an XML document. It does not define a mechanism to recognize which content or attribute values might contain URIs. This is only known by the specifications or applications assigning semantics to the vocabulary.

It is the intention of XML Base that future specifications and revisions of XML vocabularies identify which parts of the XML document are considered to be URIs, and provide normative reference to this specification in order to ensure that relative URIs are treated consistently across XML documents.

The impacts of XML Base on other standards (as of the publication date of this document) are described below.

XML 1.0 uses URI references in the system identifiers for external entities. Since these declarations appear outside of the document element (in an internal subset or external DTD), the scoping rules for xml:base prevent these URIs from being affected by the value of xml:base.

The XML Infoset defines the base URI property of element information items. The latest Infoset specification supports XML Base for purposes of determining the value of this property. Interfaces, applications, and specifications referencing this infoset property will support XML Base natively.

Namespaces in XML uses URI references, which as currently defined should not be resolved relative to the base URI defined by xml:base for the purposes of namespace identification. Higher level processes which dereference namespace URIs are not covered by the namespaces specification and might at their option specify that xml:base is honored for the purposes of fetching resources at those URIs.

The XPath data model preserves neither base URI information nor the boundaries of external entities and thus is insufficient to support resolution of relative URI references within these entities to be resolved correctly. This includes relative URI references in xml:base attributes.

The XSLT extensions to the XPath data model do provide for base URI information to be retained, but defines this information in a way that precludes support for XML Base. Future XSLT versions might want to require support for XML Base.

XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes defines a uriReference primitive datatype. The XML Datatypes specification might want to require that applications recognizing this datatype and resolving such URIs be aware of XML Base.

The XLink specification requires support for XML Base.

XHTML uses URI references beyond those expressible in XLink. These URI references might be resolved by an application relative to the base URI defined by XML Base. The XHTML specification might want to describe their level of support for XML Base.