Namespace Aliaser

Maintains unique aliases for namespaces. Supports XML, HTML, and CSS.

Usage

Namespaces can be used to ensure the names are unique.

For doing so with the help of this library:

1. Create namespace definition(s).
2. Create NamespaceAliaser instance.
3. Use that namespace aliaser to convert names from different namespaces to simple string names.

The library ensures that names from different namespaces converted to different string names by applying unique namespace aliases to them.

import { newNamespaceAliaser, NamespaceDef } from '@frontmeans/namespace-aliaser';

// Create namespace definition
const ns1 = new NamespaceDef(
  'http://my-site.com/ns1', // Unique namespace URL. Namespaces are identified by their URLs.
  'my-ns',
  'my-namespace', // Preferred namespace aliases to use.
);

// Create another namespace definition
const ns2 = new NamespaceDef(
  'http://my-site.com/ns2', // Different URL
  'my-ns',
  'my-namespace-2', // Aliases could be the same for different namespaces
  // The library would select the one unique to each of the them,
  // or generate a new alias.
);

// Create namespace aliaser.
// It is important to use the same instance for all operations
const nsAlias = newNamespaceAliaser();

// Create aliases for each namespace
const alias1 = nsAlias(ns1); // `my-ns`
const alias2 = nsAlias(ns2); // `my-namespace-2`

// Convert names in namespaces to simple ones, unique to each namespace
// Even though the local names are the same, the resulting names are unique,
// as different aliases applied.
const name1 = ns1.name(alias1, 'name'); // `my-ns-name`
const name2 = ns2.name(alias2, 'name'); // `my-namespace-2-name`

Namespace

There are several predefined namespaces:

• DEFAULT__NS Default namespace.

  This namespace is assumed for names without namespace specified.

  Its URL is empty, and it does not alter names, i.e. its NamespaceDef.name() method returns the name as is.

• MathML__NS MathML namespace.

• SVG__NS SVG namespace.

• XHTML__NS XHTML namespace.

• XML__NS XML namespace. Always bound to xml alias.

• XMLNS__NS XML Namespaces namespace. Always bound to xmlns alias.

• XSLT__NS XSL Transformations namespace.

More namespaces could be defined by instantiating or extending NamespaceDef class. Note that namespaces are identified by their URLs, rather by their definitions.

Naming Schema

A naming schema is responsible for applying namespace aliases to simple names.

Naming schemes extend Naming class.

A naming schema can be passed as a third argument to NamespaceDef.name() method. A default__naming is used by default.

So, given the previous definitions, the following code would result to different names:

const xmlName1 = ns1.name(alias1, 'name', xml__naming); // `my-ns:name`
const cssName2 = ns2.name(alias2, 'name', css__naming); // `name@my-namespace-2`

There are several predefined naming schemas:

• default__naming Default naming schema.

  Prefixes a name with namespace alias separating them by dash.

  The result looks like <alias>-<name>.

• html__naming HTML elements naming schema.

  Prefixes a name with namespace alias separating them by dash.

  The result looks like <alias>-<name>.

• xml__naming XML elements naming schema.

  Prefixes a name with namespace alias separating them by colon.

  The result looks like <alias>:<name>.

• id__naming Element identifiers naming schema.

  Prefixes a name with namespace alias separating them by colon.

  The result looks like <alias>:<name>.

• css__naming CSS classes naming scheme.

  Appends namespace alias as a name suffix separated by @ sign.

  The result looks like <name>@<alias>.

Qualified Name

Qualified name is a tuple consisting of local name string and namespace definition.

The Naming class has a utility method that allows to convert arbitrary qualified name to simple one.

So, the example above could be simplified to this:

import { default__naming, newNamespaceAliaser, NamespaceDef } from '@frontmeans/namespace-aliaser';

// Create namespace definition
const ns1 = new NamespaceDef(
  'http://my-site.com/ns1', // Unique namespace URL. Namespaces are identified by their URLs.
  'my-ns',
  'my-namespace', // Preferred namespace aliases to use.
);

// Create another namespace definition
const ns2 = new NamespaceDef(
  'http://my-site.com/ns2', // Different URL
  'my-ns',
  'my-namespace-2', // Aliases could be the same for different namespaces
  // The library would select the one unique to each of the them,
  // or generate a new alias.
);

// Create namespace aliaser.
// It is important to use the same instance for all operations
const nsAlias = newNamespaceAliaser();

// Convert qualified names to simple ones.
const name1 = default__naming.name(['name', ns1], nsAlias); // `my-ns-name`
const name2 = default__naming.name(['name', ns2], nsAlias); // `my-namespace-2-name`

A simple string is considered a qualified name in default namespace (DEFAULT__NS) and can be passed to Naming.name() method too. The original name would not be altered though. So all of the following expressions would return the same result:

default__naming.name('name', nsAlias); // `name`
css__naming.name('name', nsAlias); // `name`
default__naming.name(['name', DEFAULT__NS], nsAlias); // `name`