Question

In an XML Schema (XSD) I am writing, I need to define an attribute which can occur multiple times inside its parent element.

Just to clear it with an example : the parent element represent events, and it supports different attributes like a title and an occurrence date for instance. One of the attributes called department is the organizing department. An event may be organized by one, or many departments.

I want to know if XSD can handle multiple instances of the same attribute in an element or if this is beyond the scope of XML Standard ?

Answer 1

You can’t. Attribute names are unique per element.

If you need to have multiple bits of data under the same name, then the usual solutions are either a space separated list or child elements.

<event department="foo bar baz" />

or

<event>
    <department>foo</department>
    <department>bar</department>
    <department>baz</department>
</event>