What is an Attribute?
Simple elements cannot have attributes. If an element has attributes, it is considered to be of a complex type. But the attribute itself is always declared as a simple type.
How to Define an Attribute?
The syntax for defining an attribute is:
where xxx is the name of the attribute and yyy specifies the data type of the attribute.
XML Schema has a lot of built-in data types. The most common types are:
- xs:string
- xs:decimal
- xs:integer
- xs:boolean
- xs:date
- xs:time
Example
Here is an XML element with an attribute:
And here is the corresponding attribute definition:
