JXTA in a Nutshell

Elements

A message element contains a name, type, and content.

Name

Element names are represented as UTF-8 strings. A name has two parts: a namespace and a simple name. These are separated by a colon.

Name = simple_name | namespace ":" simple_name

simple_name may not contain a colon character and must not be empty. The namespace is not allowed to contain the colon character. namespace must contain at least one character. Use of an empty namespace is not allowed; use simple_name instead.

The namespace prevents name collision between various services and users of these services. Core services will use the jxta namespace. For example:

 jxta:TTL

Applications may use the empty namespace (simple name).

Legal names are:

jxta:abc      ; Namespace=jxta,  simple name=abc.
lmn           ; Namespace empty, simple name=lmn.

Illegal names are:

jxta:         ; Empty simple name not allowed.
:abc          ; Empty namespace not allowed.
              ; Empty name not allowed.

Type

A type is specified as a MIME type (see [RFC2046]). MIME types are UTF-8 strings. Types are used by applications and services for interpreting the associated message element data. No particular set of MIME types is understood by the core.

The element type may also be used by the JXTA transport for determining how to format the message element data for data transfer. If the transport requires a human-readable message format, such as the HTTP transport, the message element data will need to be encoded.

If the type is not specified for an element, the MIME ...