XInclude

XInclude is a generic mechanism for merging XML documents, by writing inclusion tags in the "main" document to automatically include other documents or parts thereof.^[1] The resulting document becomes a single composite XML Information Set. The XInclude mechanism can be used to incorporate content from either XML files or non-XML text files.

XInclude is not natively supported in Web browsers, but may be partially achieved by using some extra JavaScript code.^[2]

Example

For example, including the text file license.txt:

This document is published under GNU Free Documentation License

in an XHTML document:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
   <head>...</head>
   <body>
      ...
      <p><xi:include href="license.txt" parse="text"/></p>
   </body>
</html>

gives:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"
      xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude">
   <head>...</head>
   <body>
      ...
      <p>This document is published under GNU Free Documentation License</p>
   </body>
</html>

The mechanism is similar to HTML's <object> tag (which is specific to the HTML markup language), but the XInclude mechanism works with any XML format, such as SVG and XHTML.

References

^ J. Marsh; D. Orchard; Daniel Veillard. "XML Inclusions (XInclude) Version 1.0 (Second Edition), Appendix C: Examples (non-normative)". World Wide Web Consortium. Retrieved 2007-06-28.
^ Brettz9. "XInclude". Mozilla Developer Network.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)

External links

XInclude Standard
XInclude with XSLT
Using XInclude in Xerces
Using XInclude article by Elliotte Rusty Harold

World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Products and
standards

Recommendations	ActivityPub Activity Streams ARIA Canonical XML CDF CSS Animations Flexbox Grid DOM Geolocation API HTML HTML5 IndexedDB ITS JSON-LD Linked Data Notifications MathML Micropub OWL PLS RDF Schema SISR SKOS SMIL SOAP SRGS SRI SSML SVG Filter Effects SCXML SHACL SPARQL Timed text VoiceXML WoT TD Web storage WSDL Webmention WebSub XHTML +RDFa XML Base Encryption Events Information Set Namespace Schema Signature XForms XInclude XLink XOP XPath 2.0 3.x XPointer XProc XQuery XSL XSL-FO XSLT elements
Notes	IndieAuth XAdES XBL XHTML+SMIL XUP
Working drafts	CCXML CURIE EME InkML MSE RIF SMIL Timesheets sXBL WebGPU WebXR XFDL XFrames XMLHttpRequest
Guidelines	Web Content Accessibility Guidelines
Initiative	Markup Validation Service Web Accessibility Initiative Web Components
Deprecated	C-HTML HDML JSSS PGML VML WebPlatform
Obsoleted	P3P XHTML+MathML+SVG

Organizations

World Wide Web Foundation
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