Namespaces #

Namespaces in Underlay are human-readable strings that give context to the authority behind a given collection. A single namespace is given to each User and Community. The pool of available namespaces is shared amonst all users and communities.

Navigating to a namespace URL (e.g. underlay.org/jordan or underlay.org/nasa) will lead to a user's or organization's profile. The profile will list all collections associated with that namespace and other profile details. Collections live at a URL path after a namepsace, e.g. underlay.org/${namespace}/${collection-slug}${collection-shortId}.

Namespaces are not persistent! Users or communities may change the namespace over time (though, many won't), so they can not do not guarantee a persistent, permanent address.

It will be common practice to refer to a schema or collection using namespaces and collection slugs, but permanent URIs will use collection shortIds or full ids of the collection or namespace. For example

// Human-readable url
underlay.org/jordan/map-data
- or -
underlay.org/jordan/map-data-hsbga72
- or -
underlay.org/anything/anything-hsbga72


// Resolved information:
namespaceId: <uuid>
collectionId: <uuid>
collectionShortId: hsbga72

This allows us to resolve collections, specific schema or collection versions despite a namespace or collection-string changing, as long as the collection shortId is maintained.

Schemas will typically be addressed be referenced by their most recent human-readable URI. For example:

schema: jordan/map-data-hsbga@2.1