Defines an Element Attribute; IE, a attribute=value pair, as in: <element attribute="value"/>. Attributes can be in their own namespaces. General users of REXML will not interact with the Attribute class much.

Constructor.

 Attribute.new( attribute_to_clone )
 Attribute.new( source )
 Attribute.new( "attr", "attr_value" )
 Attribute.new( "attr", "attr_value", parent_element )

Returns the namespace of the attribute.

 e = Element.new( "elns:myelement" )
 e.add_attribute( "nsa:a", "aval" )
 e.add_attribute( "b", "bval" )
 e.attributes.get_attribute( "a" ).prefix   # -> "nsa"
 e.attributes.get_attribute( "b" ).prefix   # -> "elns"
 a = Attribute.new( "x", "y" )
 a.prefix                                   # -> ""

Returns the namespace URL, if defined, or nil otherwise

 e = Element.new("el")
 e.add_attributes({"xmlns:ns", "http://url"})
 e.namespace( "ns" )              # -> "http://url"

Returns true if other is an Attribute and has the same name and value, false otherwise.

Creates (and returns) a hash from both the name and value

Returns this attribute out as XML source, expanding the name

 a = Attribute.new( "x", "y" )
 a.to_string     # -> "x='y'"
 b = Attribute.new( "ns:x", "y" )
 b.to_string     # -> "ns:x='y'"

Returns the attribute value, normalized

Returns the UNNORMALIZED value of this attribute. That is, entities that can be replaced have been replaced.

Returns a copy of this attribute

Sets the element of which this object is an attribute. Normally, this is not directly called.

Returns this attribute

Removes this Attribute from the tree, and returns true if successfull

This method is usually not called directly.

Writes this attribute (EG, puts 'key="value"' to the output)