How to add custom namespace in CRX

There are times when custom namespace is needed in a system for organization and management purposes. Without registering the namespace with CRX, properties with custom namespace would not be accepted. In this blog post I will talk about two ways of registering a namespace in CRX.

To illustrate, let’s take a look at the behavior of CRX without registering any namespace. Let me go ahead and enter a property that has namespace in it:

Upon saving, I would get the following error:

Now let’s proceed with registering the namespace. There are two ways of doing this:

Register namespace via CRX Console

1. Namespace can be added via Node Type Administration in CRX Console.
2. In the Node Type Administration window, click on “Namespaces” which is located at far right of the toolbar.
   
3.  At the bottom of the Namespaces window, click on “New”.
   
4. Enter the URI and the Namespace mapping and click Ok. And you should see the namespace added:
   
5. Voila! It’s that easy. And now you can add the property again with the registered namespace:
   

Register custom namespace via CND file

1. Namespace can also be registered via a CND file. The CND file can be deployed with any CRX packages (install folder, or via the package manager).
2. Once the package is installed on CRX, any namespaces in CND files found inside the package would be registered automatically.
3. Here’s the content of the CND file:

   <demo='demo'>

4. That’s it! It’s nothing more than a mapping=uri pair.