XML Tutorial/XML Schema/any

Element Wildcards

   <source lang="xml">

Suppose you want to specify that your element can contain any of the elements. Declarations that allow you to include any element from a namespace are called element wildcards. To declare an element wildcard, use the <any> declaration: <any minOccurs="non negative number"

    maxOccurs="non negative number or unbounded" 
    namespace="allowable namespaces" 
    processContents="lax or skip or strict"> 

You are not allowed to create global <any> declarations. The namespace attribute allows several values, shown in the following table:

1. 1. any allows elements from all namespaces to be included as part of the wildcard
   2. other allows elements from namespaces other than the targetNamespace to be included as part of ##targetNamespace Allows elements from only the targetNamespaceto be included as part of the wildcard
   3. local allows any well-formed elements that are not qualified by a name space to be included as part of the wildcard

Whitespace-separated list of allowable namespace URIs allows elements from any listed namespaces to be included as part of

 the wildcard. Possible list values also include ##targetNamespace and ##local. 

To allow for any content to be used within an element, you have to use the any element: <xsd:element name="contact">

 <xsd:complexType mixed="true">
  <xsd:sequence>
   <xsd:any maxOccurs="unbounded" processContents="skip"/>
  </xsd:sequence>
 </xsd:complexType>

</xsd:element></source>