Node.namespaceURI

This regards Node.namespaceURI in the DOM 3 Core.  Going back to DOM 2, this attribute's description has started "The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified".  To me, this seems quite clear, and in programming languages like Java, I expect a null value in that language to be returned.

However, there are implementations that do not use what I would consider to be a null.  For example, Oracle's XML parser's Node.getNamespaceURI() returns an empty (zero-length) string, and Microsoft's .NET framework (the NamespaceURI property of the System.Xml.XmlNode class) likewise returns an empty string.

I would like to see DOM 3 Core clarify or amend the statement "The namespace URI of this node, or null if it is unspecified".  If implementations returning empty strings are to be considered out-of-spec, please specify this explicitly.  If returning a zero-length string is an acceptible implementation according to the standard, please state this.  If this issue is clarified elsewhere in the DOM 3 spec, please refer to that place from the description of Node.namespaceURI.

Thank you for your consideration.

Scott Nichol

Received on Friday, 25 July 2003 11:20:19 UTC