Namespaces

Learn about namespaces in the platform and what aspects of the platform concern them most

What are namespaces?

Namespaces help keep applications and different message types separate. They are used in many places like AtRecords, Events and Enrollments. Find out where they're used in Namespace footprint.

Namespace examples

There are two types of namespaces: Application namespaces and Hierarchical namespaces.

Application namespaces

Useful for keeping all of your messages under one large namespace. These namespaces are Atsigns that you should own (like @wavi) to validate the ownership of your namespace.

Examples are:

• wavi

• noports

• sshrvd

• sshnp

• my_app

Hierarchical namespaces

Hierarchical namespaces are generally used for sorting AtRecords and events, and are more specific than application namespaces.

Examples are:

• contacts.my_app

• group_2.groups.policy and group_1.groups.policy

They ascend in specificity from left to right. In these examples, you may hold all your contact AtRecords under the contacts.my_app namespace. Similarly, you may have all the group policy rules related to the group name "group_2" under the group_2.groups.policy.

Reserved namespaces

Namespaces starting with __ belong to the SDK and atServer operations. Never write to them directly. Find out where they're used in Namespace footprint.

Namespace	Purpose
__manage	Enrollment management. rw here means "can approve enrollments"
__pkams	PKAM key material
__global	Cross-namespace scope
__rpcs	AtRpc request/response traffic
__shared_keys	Symmetric keys shared with other Atsigns
__public_keys	Additional encryption public keys
__self_keys	Additional self encryption keys
__rr	AtCollection read receipts
*	In Enrollments, this means "all namespaces"

Namespace footprint

Namespaces have impacts in many places such as:

• Reserved namespaces — you cannot assign certain namespaces to your AtKeys

• Reserved namespaces — you cannot assign certain namespaces to your notifications

• Namespace-scoped permissions — certain namespaces are important to keep note of when enrolling