SIMPLE WG J. Urpalainen
Internet-Draft Nokia Research Center
Expires: September 7, 2006 March 6, 2006
An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Patch Operations Framework Utilizing
XML Path Language (XPath) Selectors
draft-ietf-simple-xml-patch-ops-02
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Abstract
Extensible Markup Language (XML) documents are widely used as
containers for the exchange and storage of arbitrary data in today's
systems. Updates to this data require transporting of the entire XML
document between hosts, unless there's a mechanism that allows
exchanging only the updates of XML documents. This document
describes an XML patch framework utilizing XML Path language (XPath)
selectors. These selector values and updated new data content
constitute the basis of patch operations described in this document.
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In addition to them, with basic <add>, <replace> and <remove>
directives a set of patches can then be applied to update an existing
XML document.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
2. Conventions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
3. Basic Features and Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
4. Patch Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.1. Locating the Target for a Patch . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.2. Namespace Mangling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
4.3. <add> Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
4.4. <replace> Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.5. <remove> Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
5. Error Handling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
6. Usage of Patch Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
7. Usage of Selector Values . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
8. Full Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
9. XML Schema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
10. IANA Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
10.1. XML Schema Registration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
11. Security Considerations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
12. Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
13. References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
13.1. Normative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
13.2. Informative References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Author's Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Intellectual Property and Copyright Statements . . . . . . . . . . 22
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1. Introduction
Extensible Markup Language (XML) [2] documents are widely used as
containers for the exchange and storage of arbitrary data in today's
systems. An example of such a system is the Common Presence Profile
(CPP) [16] compatible presence system, in which presence data is
represented using the XML based Presence Information Data Format
(PIDF) [17]. Updates to this data require transporting of the entire
XML document between hosts, unless there's a mechanism that allows
exchanging only the updates of an XML document.
This document describes an XML patch framework which utilizes XML
Path language (XPath) [3] selectors. An XPath selector is used to
pinpoint the target for a change. These selector values and updated
new data content constitute the basis of patch operations described
in this document. In addition to them, with basic <add>, <replace>
and <remove> directives a set of patches can be applied to update an
existing initial XML document. With these patch operations, a simple
semantics for data oriented XML documents [7] is achieved, that is,
modifications like additions, removals or substitutions of elements
and attributes can easily be performed. This document does not
describe a full XML diff format, only basic patch operation elements
which can be embedded within a full format.
As an example, in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) [18] based
presence system a partial PIDF XML document format [13] consists of
the existing PIDF document format combined with the patch operations
elements described in this document. In general, patch operations
can be used in any application that exchanges XML documents, for
example within the SIP Events framework [12]. Another example is
XCAP-diff [14] which uses this framework for sending partial updates
of changes to XCAP [15] resources.
2. Conventions
In this document, the key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED",
"SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY",
and "OPTIONAL" are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119, BCP 14
[1] and indicate requirement levels for compliant implementations.
The following terms are used in this document:
Initial XML document: An initial XML document that is going to be
updated with a set of patches.
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XML diff document: A frame XML document that contains patch operation
elements, namespace declarations and all the document content
changes that are needed in order to transform an initial XML
document into a new patched XML document.
Patched XML document: An XML document that results after applying one
or more patch operations defined in the XML diff document to the
initial XML document.
Patch operation: A single change, i.e. a patch that is being applied
to update an initial XML document.
Patch operation element: An XML element that represents a single
patch operation.
Type definition for an element: A W3C Schema type definition for an
element that describes a patch operation content.
In-scope namespace declaration: A list of all in-scope namespace
declarations within a context node. The QName expansion of a
context node is based on mapping a prefix with one of these
declarations. For an element, one namespace binding may have an
empty prefix.
Positional constraint: A number enclosed with square brackets. It
can be used as a location step predicate.
Located target node: A node which was found from the initial XML
document with the aid of an XPath selector value.
White space text node: A text node which contains only white space.
3. Basic Features and Requirements
In this framework, XPath selector values and new data content are
embedded within XML elements, the names of which imply the type of a
modification: <add>, <replace> or <remove>. These elements, or
synonymously patch operations as used in this document, are described
by defining their schema types with the W3C Schema language [6].
XPath selectors pinpoint the target for a change and they are
expressed as attributes of these elements. The child node(s) of
patch operation elements contain the new data content. In general
when applicable, the new content SHOULD be moved unaltered to the
patched XML document.
The specifications utilizing these element types MUST define the full
XML diff format with an appropriate MIME type [11] and a character
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set, e.g. UTF-8 [9]. The partial PIDF format [13] includes this
schema and describes additional definitions to produce a complete XML
diff format for partial presence information updates.
As the schema defined in this document does not declare any target
namespace, the type definitions inherit the target namespace of the
including schema. Therefore, additional namespace declarations
within the XML diff documents can be avoided.
It is anticipated that applications using these types will define
<add>, <replace> and <remove> elements based on the corresponding
type definitions in this schema. In addition, an application may
reference only a subset of these type definitions. A future
extension can introduce other operations, e.g. with document oriented
models [7] a <move> operation and a text node patching algorithm
combined with <move> would undoubtedly produce smaller XML diff
documents.
The instance document elements based on these schema type definitions
MUST be well formed and SHOULD be valid.
The following XPath 1.0 data model node types can be added, replaced
or removed with this framework: elements, attributes, namespaces,
comments, texts and processing instructions. The full XML prolog
including e.g. XML entities [2] and the root node of an XML document
cannot be patched according to this framework. However, patching of
comments and processing instructions of the root node is allowed.
Naturally the removal or addition of a document root element is not
allowed as any valid XML document MUST always contain a single root
element. Also note that support for external entities is beyond the
scope of this framework.
Note: Implementations must thus be based on XML parsers and XPath
interpreters that support all XPath 1.0 data model node types
except the root node of an XML document. In addition to the
location capability of these nodes, some application programming
interfaces are needed for their manipulation in practice.
XML documents which are equivalent for the purposes of many
applications MAY differ in their physical representation. The aim of
this document is to describe a deterministic framework where the
canonical form with comments [4] of an XML document determines
logical equivalence. For example, white space text nodes MUST be
processed properly in order to fulfil this requirement as white space
is by default significant [4].
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4. Patch Operations
An XML diff document contains a collection of patch operation
elements, including one or more <add>, <replace> and <remove>
elements. These patch operations will be applied sequentially in the
document order. After the first patch has been applied to update an
initial XML document, the patched XML document becomes a new initial
XML document. This procedure repeats until all patches have
successfully been processed. In other words, this framework does not
allow "apply all occurrences" in one pass.
4.1. Locating the Target for a Patch
Each patch operation element contains a 'sel' attribute. The value
of this attribute is an XPath selector with a restricted subset of
the full XPath 1.0 recommendation. The 'sel' value is used to locate
a single unique target node from the initial XML document. This
located node pinpoints the target for a change and usually it is an
element, which is e.g. either updated itself or some child node(s)
are added into it. It may also be for instance a comment node, after
which some other sibling node(s) are inserted. In any case, it is an
error condition if multiple nodes are found during the evaluation of
this selector value.
The XPath selections of the 'sel' attribute always start from the
root node of a document. Thus relative location paths SHOULD be used
so that the starting root node selection "/" can be omitted. When
locating elements in a document tree, a node test can either be a "*"
character or a QName. A "*" character selects all element children
of the context node. Right after the node test, a location step can
contain one or more predicates in any order. An attribute value
comparison is one of the most typical predicates. The string value
of the current context node or a child element may alternatively be
used to identify elements in the tree. The character ".", which
denotes a current context node selection, is an abbreviated form of
"self::node()". Lastly, positional constraints like "[2]" can also
be used as an additional predicate.
An XPath 1.0 "id()" node-set function MAY also be used to identify
unique elements from the document tree. The schema that describes
the content model of the document MUST then use an attribute with the
type ID [7] or with non-validating XML parsers, an "xml:id" [8]
attribute MUST have been used within an instance document.
4.2. Namespace Mangling
While the XPath recommendation specifies that prefixes can be used in
location steps, it does not specify how associated namespace URIs are
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discovered during these evaluations. In the patch operation
framework QName [5] expansion within a location step is evaluated
according to the namespace declarations of the XML diff document.
Thus the namespace URIs for these prefixes are found from the in-
scope namespaces of the patch operation element. In other words, the
XML diff document contains all needed information for QName
expansions in order to perform XPath searches from the initial XML
document.
Note: It should be emphasized that prefixes within the XPath
selectors MAY be different than those of the initial XML document
because the matching of nodes is based on expanded names, i.e. a
prefix maps to a namespace URI and these URIs and local names MUST
be identical. For example, with a selector "p:foo", "p" maps to a
namespace URI and "foo" is the local name.
In this framework, when a node test is "foo" and the patch operation
element has an in-scope default namespace declaration, a qualified
<foo> element from the initial XML document is being searched. That
is, the namespace URI of the expanded name of the located <foo>
element MUST then be identical compared to this default namespace
declaration. If there's not an in-scope default namespace
declaration within the evaluation context, an unqualified <foo>
element is located.
Note: By contrast, in XPath 1.0 a "foo" selector always locates an
unqualified <foo> element but in XPath 2.0 [10] also a qualified
one which is attached with the default namespace declaration.
Note: The XPath 1.0 recommendation specifies "namespace-uri()" and
"local-name()" node-set functions which can be used within
predicates. These functions may be utilized during XPath
evaluations if there are no other means to "register" prefixes
with associated namespace URIs. They can also be used when
handling selections where default namespaces are attached to
elements. However, the schema type definitions for these patch
operation elements do not allow the usage of these functions.
Also elements within the changed data content are usually namespace
qualified. For example, when adding a new namespace qualified
element to the initial XML document, the namespace declaration
reference of this new element belongs first to the XML diff document.
Naturally after copying or moving this element, the attached
namespace MUST refer to a declaration within the patched XML
document. If this namespace is declared in the patch operation
element or within its ascendants, these references MUST thus be
changed. Like in XPath, the mapping of these references is based on
identical namespace URIs, not prefixes. The namespace with an
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identical URI from the in-scope namespaces of a context node of the
initial XML document MUST be chosen. However, if overlapping in-
scope namespaces exist, i.e., there are several in-scope namespaces
with an identical namespace URI, then the namespace with the same
prefix MUST be chosen. If an equivalent prefix is not then found, an
error occurs. For instance, this kind of overlapping can happen when
a namespace qualified attribute is added while elements are attached
with an identical default namespace declaration.
When the new added or updated elements contain namespace
declarations, the namespace nodes move unaltered from the XML diff
document to the patched XML document. Default namespace declarations
can only be added by this way but prefixed namespace declarations MAY
be added or removed with XPath namespace axis semantics shown later
in this document.
Note: In practice, this namespace mangling means that an XML diff
document MUST only know the namespace URIs of qualified nodes, the
prefixes of the initial XML document are not significant unless
there are those overlapping namespace declarations. In other
words, regardless whether the prefixes of qualified elements of
the initial XML document are empty (default namespace attached) or
not, the XML diff document may remain the same.
4.3. <add> Element
The <add> element represents the addition of some new content to the
initial XML document: e.g. a new element can be appended into an
existing element.
The new data content exists as the child node(s) of the <add>
element. When adding attributes and namespaces the child node of the
<add> element MUST be a single text node. Otherwise, the <add>
element can contain any mixture of element, text, comment or
processing instruction nodes in any order. All children of the <add>
element are then copied into an initial XML document. The described
namespace mangling procedure applies to added elements, which include
all of their attribute, namespace and descendant nodes.
The <add> element type has three attributes: 'sel', 'type' and 'pos'.
The value of the optional 'type' attribute is only used when adding
attributes and namespaces. Then the located target node MUST be an
element into which new attributes and namespace declarations are
inserted. When the value of this 'type' attribute equals "@attr" the
purpose is to add a new attribute node with the name 'attr'. The
value of this new 'attr' attribute is the text node content of the
<add> element. The less frequently used, prefixed, i.e. namespace
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qualified attributes can also be added. If the value of the 'type'
attribute equals "namespace::pref" the aim is to add a new "pref"
prefixed namespace declaration and the text node content of the <add>
element contains the corresponding namespace URI.
Note: The 'type' attribute is thus also an XPath selector, but it
only locates attributes and namespaces. Attribute axis
"attribute" has an abbreviated form "@" unlike the "namespace"
axis which doesn't have an abbreviated form. Double colons "::"
are used as an axis separator in XPath.
The value of the optional 'pos' attribute indicates the positioning
of new data content. It is not used when adding attributes or
namespaces. When neither 'type' nor 'pos' attribute exist, the
children of the <add> element are then appended as the last child
node(s) of the located target element. When the value of 'pos'
attribute is "prepend" the new node(s) are added as the first child
node(s) of the located target element. With the value of "before"
the added new node(s) MUST be the immediate preceding sibling node(s)
and with "after" the immediate following sibling node(s) of the
located target node.
Some examples follow where nodes are not namespace qualified and
prefixes are therefore not used. The whole XML diff content is not
shown in these examples, only patch operation elements because of
simplicity reasons:
<add sel="doc"><foo id="ert4773">This is a new child</foo></add>
Once the <doc> element has been found from the initial XML document,
a new <foo> element is appended as the last child node of the <doc>
element. The located target node: the <doc> element is naturally the
root element of the initial XML document. The new <foo> element
contains an 'id' attribute and a child text node.
An example for an addition of an attribute:
<add sel="doc/foo[@id='ert4773']" type="@user">Bob</add>
This operation adds a new 'user' attribute to the <foo> element which
was located by using an 'id' attribute value predicate. The value of
this new 'user' attribute is "Bob".
A similar patched XML document is achieved when using a validating
XML parser, if the 'sel' selector value had been 'id("ert4773")' and
if the data type of the 'id' attribute is "ID" [7].
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Note: As the 'sel' selector value MAY contain quotation marks,
escaped forms: """ or "'" can be used within attribute
values. However, it is often more appropriate to use the
apostrophe (') character as shown in these examples. An
alternative is also to interchange the apostrophes and quotation
marks.
An example for an addition of a prefixed namespace declaration:
<add sel="doc" type="namespace::pref">urn:ns:xxx</add>
This operation adds a new namespace declaration to the <doc> element.
The prefix of this new namespace node is thus "pref" and the
namespace URI is "urn:ns:xxx".
An example for an addition of a comment node:
<add sel="doc/foo[@id='ert4773']" pos="before"><!-- comment --></add>
This operation adds a new comment node just before the <foo> element
as an immediate preceding sibling node. This is also an example how
a 'pos' attribute directive can be used.
Some complexity arises when so called white space text nodes exist
within an initial XML document. The XPath 1.0 data model requires
that a text node MUST not have another text node as an immediate
sibling node. For instance, if an add operation is like this:
<add sel="doc">
<foo id="ert4773">This is a new child</foo></add>
The <add> element has then two child nodes: a white space text node
(a linefeed and two spaces) and a <foo> element. If the existing
last child of the <doc> element is a text node, its content and the
white space text node content MUST then be combined together.
Otherwise (white space) text nodes can be added just like elements
and thus, the canonical form of the patched XML document easily
remains deterministic. As several sibling nodes can be inserted with
a single <add> operation, a "pretty printing" style can easily be
maintained.
Still another example about the handling of text nodes. Consider
this example:
<add sel="*/foo/text()[2]" pos="after">new<bar/>elem</add>
The second text node child of the <foo> element is first located.
The added new content contains two text nodes and an element. As
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there can not be immediate sibling text nodes, the located target
text node content and the first new text node content MUST be
combined together. In essence, if the 'pos' value had been "before",
the second new text node content would effectively have been
prepended to the located target text node.
Note: It is still worth noting that text nodes MAY contain CDATA
sections, the latter of which are not treated as separate nodes.
Once these CDATA sections exist within the new text nodes, they
SHOULD be moved unaltered to the patched XML document.
While XML entities [2] cannot be patched with this framework, the
references to other than predefined internal entities can exist
within text nodes or attributes when the XML prolog contains those
declarations. These references may then be preserved if both the XML
diff and the initial XML document have identical declarations within
their prologs. Otherwise, references may be replaced with identical
text as long as the "canonically equivalent" rule is obeyed.
4.4. <replace> Element
The <replace> element represents a replacement operation: e.g. an
existing element is updated with a new element or an attribute value
is replaced with a new value. This <replace> operation always
updates a single node or node content at a time.
The <replace> element type has only a 'sel' attribute. If the
located target node is an element, a comment or a processing
instruction, then the child of the <replace> element MUST also be of
the same type. Otherwise the <replace> element MUST have text
content or it MAY be empty when replacing an attribute value or a
text node content.
Examples for replace operations, first a replacement of an element:
<replace sel="doc/foo[@a='1']"><bar a="2"/></replace>
This will update the <foo> element which has an 'a' attribute with
value "1". The located target element is replaced with the <bar>
element. So all descendant nodes, namespace declarations and
attributes of the replaced <foo> element, if any existed, are thus
removed.
An example for a replacement of an attribute value:
<replace sel="doc/@a">new value</replace>
This will replace the 'a' attribute content of the <doc> element with
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the value "new value". If the <replace> element is empty, the 'a'
attribute MUST then remain in the patched XML document appearing like
<doc a=""/>.
An example for a replacement of a namespace URI:
<replace sel="doc/namespace::pref">urn:new:xxx</replace>
This will replace the URI value of 'pref' prefixed namespace node
with "urn:new:xxx". The parent node of the namespace declaration
MUST be the <doc> element, otherwise an error occurs.
An example for a replacement of a comment node:
<replace sel="doc/comment()[1]"><!-- This is the new content
--></replace>
This will replace a comment node. The located target node is the
first comment node child of the <doc> element.
An example for a replacement of a processing instruction node:
<replace sel='doc/processing-instruction("test")'><?test bar="foobar"
?></replace>
This will replace the processing instruction node "test" whose parent
is the <doc> element.
An example for a replacement of a text node:
<replace sel="doc/foo/text()[1]">This is the new text content</
replace>
This will replace the first text node child of the <foo> element.
The positional constraint "[1]" is not usually needed as the element
content is rarely of mixed type [6] where several text node siblings
typically exist.
If a text node is updated and the <replace> element is empty, the
text node MUST thus be removed as a text node MUST always have at
least one character of data.
4.5. <remove> Element
The <remove> element represents a removal operation of e.g. an
existing element or an attribute.
The <remove> element type has two attributes: 'sel' and 'ws'. The
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value of the optional 'ws' attribute is used to remove the possible
white space text nodes that exist either as immediate following or
preceding sibling nodes of the located target node. The usage of
'ws' attribute is only allowed when removing other types than text,
attribute and namespace nodes. If the value of 'ws' is "before", the
purpose is to remove the immediate preceding sibling node which MUST
be a white space text node and if the value is "after", the
corresponding following node. If the 'ws' value is "both", both the
preceding and following white space text nodes MUST be removed.
Examples for remove operations, first a removal of an element
including all of its descendant, attribute and namespace nodes:
<remove sel="doc/foo[@a='1']" ws="after"/>
This will remove the <foo> element as well as the immediate following
sibling white space text node of the <foo> element. If the immediate
following sibling node is not a white space text node, an error
occurs.
An example for a removal of an attribute node:
<remove sel="doc/@a"/>
This will remove the 'a' attribute node from the <doc> element.
An example for a removal of a namespace node:
<remove sel="doc/foo/namespace::pref"/>
This will remove the 'pref' prefixed namespace node from the <foo>
element. Naturally this prefix MUST not be associated with any node
prior to the removal of this namespace node. Also the parent node of
this namespace declaration MUST be the <foo> element.
An example for a removal of a comment node:
<remove sel="doc/comment()[1]"/>
This will remove the first comment node child of the <doc> element.
An example for a removal of a processing instruction node:
<remove sel='doc/processing-instruction("test")'/>
This will remove the "test" processing instruction node child of the
<doc> element.
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An example for a removal of a text node:
<remove sel="doc/foo/text()[1]"/>
This will remove the first text node child of the <foo> element.
When removing an element, a comment or a processing instruction node
which has immediate preceding and following sibling text nodes
without the 'ws' directive, the content of these two text nodes MUST
be combined together. The latter text node thus disappears from the
document.
5. Error Handling
It is an error condition if any of the patch operations can not be
unambiguously fulfilled. In other words, once a particular patch
operation fails, it is an error condition and processing of further
patch operations is hardly sensible. Also it is beyond the scope of
this document to describe a generic error response.
6. Usage of Patch Operations
An XML diff document SHOULD contain only the nodes which have been
modified. However, when there's a large collection of changes it MAY
be desirable to exchange the full document content instead. How this
will be done in practice is beyond the scope of this document.
7. Usage of Selector Values
It is up to the application to decide the verbosity model for
selector values. Positional element selectors like "*/*[3]/*[2]"
provide the shortest selectors, but care must to taken when using
them. When there are several removals of sibling elements, the
positional element indexes change after each update. Likewise these
indexes change when new elements are inserted into the tree. Using
names with possible attribute predicates like "doc[@sel='foo']" is
usually easier for an application, be it e.g. an auto diff tool but
it leads to larger diff documents.
8. Full Example
An example initial XML document where namespace qualified elements
exist:
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xxx"
xmlns:z="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yyy">
<note>This is a sample document</note>
<elem a="foo">
<child/>
</elem>
<elem a="bar">
<z:child/>
</elem>
</doc>
An imaginary XML diff document where prefix "p" corresponds the
targetNamespace of this imaginary schema:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<p:diff xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xxx"
xmlns:y="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yyy"
xmlns:p="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:diff">
<p:add sel="doc/elem[@a='foo']"> <!-- This is a new child -->
<child id="ert4773">
<y:node/>
</child>
</p:add>
<p:replace sel="doc/note/text()">Patched doc</p:replace>
<p:remove sel="*/elem[@a='bar']/y:child" ws="both"/>
<p:add sel="*/elem[@a='bar']" type="@b">new attr</p:add>
</p:diff>
One possible form of the result XML document after applying the
patches:
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<doc xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:xxx"
xmlns:z="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:yyy">
<note>Patched doc</note>
<elem a="foo">
<child/>
<!-- This is a new child -->
<child id="ert4773">
<z:node/>
</child>
</elem>
<elem a="bar" b="new attr"/>
</doc>
The <node> and removed <child> element prefixes within the XML diff
document are different than what are the "identical" namespace
declarations in the initial XML document. If the initial XML
document had used a prefixed namespace declaration instead of the
default one, the XML diff document could still have been the same.
The added new qualified elements would just have inherited that
prefix.
9. XML Schema
The schema types for the patch operation elements.
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE schema [
<!ENTITY ncname "[^:\I][^:\C]*">
<!ENTITY qname "(&ncname;:)?&ncname;">
<!ENTITY aname "@&qname;">
<!ENTITY pos "\[\d+\]">
<!ENTITY attr "\[&aname;='(.)*'\]|\[&aname;="(.)*"\]">
<!ENTITY valueq "\[(&qname;|\.)="(.)*"\]">
<!ENTITY value "\[(&qname;|\.)='(.)*'\]|&valueq;">
<!ENTITY cond "&attr;|&value;|&pos;">
<!ENTITY step "(&qname;|\*)(&cond;)*">
<!ENTITY piq "processing-instruction\(("&ncname;")?\)">
<!ENTITY pi "processing-instruction\(('&ncname;')?\)|&piq;">
<!ENTITY id "id\(('&ncname;')?\)|id\(("&ncname;")?\)">
<!ENTITY com "comment\(\)">
<!ENTITY text "text\(\)">
<!ENTITY nspa "namespace::&ncname;">
<!ENTITY child "&step;|&com;(&pos;)?|&text;(&pos;)?|π(&pos;)?">
<!ENTITY last "&child;|&aname;|&nspa;">
]>
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<xsd:schema
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
elementFormDefault="qualified">
<xsd:simpleType name="xpath">
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
<xsd:pattern value="(/)?(&step;/)*(&last;)"/>
<xsd:pattern value="(/)?&id;((/&step;)*(/&last;))?"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:simpleType name="xpath-add">
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
<xsd:pattern value="(/)?(&step;/)*(&child;)"/>
<xsd:pattern value="(/)?&id;((/&step;)*(/&child;))?"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:simpleType name="pos">
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
<xsd:enumeration value="before"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="after"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="prepend"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:simpleType name="type">
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
<xsd:pattern value="&aname;"/>
<xsd:pattern value="&nspa;"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:complexType name="add">
<xsd:complexContent mixed="true">
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:anyType">
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:any processContents="lax" namespace="##any"
minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="unbounded"/>
</xsd:sequence>
<xsd:attribute name="sel" type="xpath-add"
use="required"/>
<xsd:attribute name="pos" type="pos"/>
<xsd:attribute name="type" type="type"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:complexContent>
</xsd:complexType>
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<xsd:complexType name="replace">
<xsd:complexContent mixed="true">
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:anyType">
<xsd:sequence>
<xsd:any processContents="lax" namespace="##any"
minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>
</xsd:sequence>
<xsd:attribute name="sel" type="xpath" use="required"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:complexContent>
</xsd:complexType>
<xsd:simpleType name="ws">
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
<xsd:enumeration value="before"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="after"/>
<xsd:enumeration value="both"/>
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:complexType name="remove">
<xsd:attribute name="sel" type="xpath" use="required"/>
<xsd:attribute name="ws" type="ws"/>
</xsd:complexType>
</xsd:schema>
10. IANA Considerations
10.1. XML Schema Registration
This section registers a new XML Schema.
URI:
urn:ietf:params:xml:schema:xml-patch-ops
Registrant Contact:
IETF, SIMPLE working group, <simple@ietf.org>
Jari Urpalainen, <jari.urpalainen@nokia.com>
11. Security Considerations
Information exchanged within these patch operations can be highly
sensitive. Thus systems need to protect the integrity and
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confidentiality of this data. Especially, the transport protocol
once it is used SHOULD have capabilities to protect from possible
threats. For example, a malicious man-in-the-middle attack could
easily give misinformation. However, all the security considerations
depend very much on the application which utilizes this framework.
12. Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Eva Leppanen, Mikko Lonnfors, Aki
Niemi, Jonathan Rosenberg, Miguel A. Garcia, Anat Angel and Stephane
Bortzmeyer for their valuable comments and Ted Hardie for his input
and support.
13. References
13.1. Normative References
[1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement
Levels", BCP 14, RFC 2119, March 1997.
[2] "Extensible Markup Language (XML) 1.0 (Third Edition)", W3C
Recommendation REC-xml-20040204 , February 2004.
[3] "XML Path Language (XPath) Version 1.0", W3C Recommendation REC-
xpath-19991116 , November 1999.
[4] "Canonical XML 1.0", W3C Recommendation REC-xml-c14n-20010315 ,
March 2001.
[5] "Namespaces in XML", W3C Recommendation REC-xml-names-19990114 ,
January 1999.
[6] "XML Schema Part 1: Structures Second Edition", W3C
Recommendation REC-xmlschema-1-20041028 , October 2004.
[7] "XML Schema Part 2: Datatypes Second Edition", W3C
Recommendation PER-xmlschema-2-20040318 , October 2004.
[8] "xml:id Version 1.0 W3C Recommendation 9 September 2005", W3C
Recommendation PR-xml-id-20050712 , September 2005.
[9] Yergeau, F., "UTF-8, a transformation format of ISO 10646",
RFC 2279, January 1998.
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13.2. Informative References
[10] "XML Path Language (XPath) Version 2.0", W3C Candidate
Recommendation 3 20051103 , November 2005.
[11] Murata, M., "XML media types", RFC 3023, January 2001.
[12] Roach, A., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP)-Specific Event
Notification", RFC 3265, June 2002.
[13] Lonnfors, M., Leppanen, E., Khartabil, H., and J. Urpalainen,
"Presence Information Data format (PIDF) Extension for Partial
Presence", draft-ietf-simple-partial-pidf-format-06 (work in
progress), March 2006.
[14] Rosenberg, J., "An Extensible Markup Language (XML) Document
Format For Indicating Changes in XML Configuration Access
Protocol (XCAP) Resources", draft-ietf-simple-xcap-diff-0x
(work in progress), ? 2006.
[15] Rosenberg, J., "The Extensible Markup Language (XML)
Configuration Access Protocol (XCAP)",
draft-ietf-simple-xcap-08, October 2005.
[16] Peterson, J., "Common Profile for Presence (CPP)", RFC 3859,
August 2004.
[17] Sugano, H., "CPIM presence information data format", RFC 3863,
May 2003.
[18] Niemi, A., "Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) Extension for
Event State Publication", RFC 3903, October 2004.
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Author's Address
Jari Urpalainen
Nokia Research Center
Itamerenkatu 11-13
Helsinki 00180
Finland
Phone: +358 7180 37686
Email: jari.urpalainen@nokia.com
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Urpalainen Expires September 7, 2006 [Page 22]
