Data is sent to and fetched from the API as an XML in different formats and versions. Please see the specific API description to learn more about the specific API-Calls (structure, commands etc).
Here you find all the relevant XML schema files (XSDs).
http://services.mobile.de/manual/schema-overview.html
This is a JavaDoc styled HTML description of our XML schemas. It is generated from the XSD file, so if you
prefer to read the XSD files you will find the same information there.
http://services.mobile.de/schemaDoc/index.html
In the light of recent incidents, we would like to remind our API users that it is absolutely necessary to process the XML data we deliver according to the XML standards developed by the World-Wide-Web-Consortium (W3C).
http://www.w3.org/standards/techs/xml
Furthermore, these standards are an important part of our interface definition - on which both sides of the interface
must be able to rely on.
Particularly, we want to point out the namespace prefixes (e.g. ns2, ns3). These prefixes are generated
automatically and therefore can always change – apparently without prior communication. Usually, this is not a problem
because these prefixes are resolved by the „xmlns“-attributes within the XML document and can be translated to complete
namespace names by that mechanism.
Please note the W3Cs specification for namespaces
(http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names/) which states the following:
...An attribute-based declaration syntax is provided to bind prefixes to namespace names and to bind a default namespace that applies to unprefixed element names; these declarations are scoped by the elements on which they appear so that different bindings may apply in different parts of a document. Processors conforming to this specification MUST recognize and act on these declarations and prefixes...
Regarding these facts, the processing of XML data is not a trivial thing. Therefore we strongly discourage the usage of self-made XML parsers. Please use a tested and proven XML parser implementation. By doing so, you don’t have to worry about the details of the XML specification that much. Especially the open source sector provides freely available and very robust XML parsers for the most common programming languages – when your language does not have this support integrated yet anyway.