How the Add Namespace Sample Works

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The first, second, and fourth tests use the Add Namespace component located within the NamespaceSampleReceivePipeline pipeline. It takes as input a document with no namespace on the root node, such as the following:

<CanonicalOrder OrderID="OrderID_0" OrderDate="OrderDate_1" Status="Status_2">

The following table shows the property values set for the Add Namespace component.

Property	Type	Value
ExtractionNodeXPath	Static	(empty)
NamespaceBase	Static	http://schemas.microsoft.biztalk.esb.test.com/test
NamespacePrefix	Static	esbTest
Separator	Static	/
XPaths	Dynamic	/CanonicalOrder/@OrderID|/CanonicalOrder/@OrderDate

The property settings shown in the table cause the component to search the XML document by executing the two XPath queries /CanonicalOrder/@OrderID and /CanonicalOrder/@OrderDate (the two queries specified for the XPaths property, separated by a "pipe" character). These queries return the values of the OrderID and OrderDate attributes of the root node of the document; in this example, the two values are "OrderID_0" and "OrderDate_1".

The component then uses these values, and the values of the other properties, to construct the new root namespace. It combines the NamespaceBase, the NamespacePrefix, the Separator, and the values from the two XPath queries in the following format:

xmlns:{NamespacePrefix}="{NamespaceBase}{Separator}{XPaths[1]}{Seperator}
                         {XPaths[2]}{Separator}...{XPaths[n]}"

This produces the new namespace, as shown here:

xmlns:esbTest="http://schemas.microsoft.biztalk.esb.test.com/test
               /OrderID_0/OrderDate_1"

Therefore, the updated document after processing by the NamespaceSampleReceivePipeline pipeline is the following:

<esbTest:CanonicalOrder xmlns:esbTest=
    "http://schemas.microsoft.biztalk.esb.test.com/test/OrderID_0
    /OrderDate_1" OrderID="OrderID_0" OrderDate="OrderDate_1" 
    Status="Status_2">

Using the ExtractionNodeXPath Property

By default, the Add Namespace component uses the root element of the XML document within the message when adding namespace and prefix information. If want to use only a subset of the XML document as the message body (useful in certain envelope scenarios or when only a portion of an inbound document has relevance), you can set the ExtractionNodeXPath property to force the Add Namespace component to seek the specified element for use as the resultant message. For example, if you know that a received CanonicalOrder message will have only one OrderDetails element that is relevant for consumers of this message contained within it, you can set the ExtractionNodeXPath property to specify the path to the OrderDetails element. You can see an example of this process in the Add Via Extraction to Pass-through test discussed earlier.

Note

The ExtractionNodeXPath property must be an XPath that returns only one element. The component will raise an exception if the result is not an element or if the XPath query returns more than one element.