Re: [xml-dev] Valid element name

[Melvin Chin <mc@SoftOffice.Net>]

At 02:52 PM 2006-11-15 +0000, Fraser Goffin wrote:
><PremisesRatingData(NU)_FloodRate>
>
>Are there any reasonable approaches to encode invalid characters into
>something else that would be legal within an element name ??

A couple of ways actually.  A quick and simple way to manage small scale
"invalid" names is to do you own table-mapping of invalid characters to valid
ones, escaped by a reserved string.   Eg.
         Reserve String = "___" (3 underscore characters)
         Table Map:  '(' --> A, ')' --> B
         Then: <PremisesRatingData(NU)_FloodRate>
         Becomes: <PremisesRatingData___ANU___B_FloodRate>

Another way to handle situation if you have majority "invalid" name most of
the time, just perform MD5(invalid_name) and use that as your name in the
XML instance and keeping a table of "MD5(invalid_name) --> invalid_name"
to reverse-map back to original name.



cheers.