Built in Data Types

There are a number of built in data types defined within the W3C standard. The following table (taken from the standard) shows them, and provides an example value. Form more information see the standards documentation.

 

Simple Type	Examples (delimited by commas)	Notes
anyURI	http://www.example.com/
anyAtomicType		New in XSD 1.1, a generic type that encompasses all atomic types, both primitive and derived
anySimpleType		New in XSD 1.1 , a base type from which all other built-in types are derived. Any value (including an empty value) is allowed for xsd:anySimpleType.
base64Binary	GpM7
boolean	true, false, 1, 0
byte	-128, ...-1, 0, 1, ... 127	see (2)
date	31/05/1999	see (2)
dateTime	1999-05-31T13:20:00.000-05:00	May 31st 1999 at 1.20pm Eastern Standard Time which is 5 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time, see (2)
dateTimeStamp	2004-04-12T13:20:00-05:00	New in XSD 1.1
dayTimeDuration	P3DT10H30M12.3S	New in XSD 1.1
decimal	-1.23, 0, 123.4, 1000.00	see (2)
double	-INF, -1E4, -0, 0, 12.78E-2, 12, INF, NaN	equivalent to double-precision 64-bit floating point, see (2)
duration	P1Y2M3DT10H30M12.3S	1 year, 2 months, 3 days, 10 hours, 30 minutes, and 12.3 seconds
ENTITIES		XML 1.0 ENTITIES attribute type, see (1)
ENTITY		XML 1.0 ENTITY attribute type, see (1)
float	-INF, -1E4, -0, 0, 12.78E-2, 12, INF, NaN	equivalent to single-precision 32-bit floating point, NaN is "not a number", see (2)
gDay	-31	the 31st day, see (2) (5)
gMonth	5	May, see (2) (5)
gMonthDay	-26	every May 31st, see (2) (5)
gYear	1999	1999, see (2) (5)
gYearMonth	1999-02	the month of February 1999, regardless of the number of days, see (2) (5)
hexBinary	0FB7
ID		XML 1.0 ID attribute type, see (1)
IDREF		XML 1.0 IDREF attribute type, see (1)
IDREFS		XML 1.0 IDREFS attribute type, see (1)
int	-2147483648, ... -1, 0, 1, ... 2147483647	see (2)
integer	...-1, 0, 1, ...	see (2)
language	en-GB, en-US, fr	valid values for xml:lang as defined in XML 1.0
long	-9223372036854775808, ... -1, 0, 1, ... 9223372036854775807	see (2)
Name	shipTo	XML 1.0 Name type
NCName	USAddress	XML Namespace NCName, i.e. a QName without the prefix and colon
negativeInteger	... -2, -1	see (2)
NMTOKEN	US,	XML 1.0 NMTOKEN attribute type, see (1)
NMTOKENS	US UK,	XML 1.0 NMTOKENS attribute type, i.e. a whitespace separated list of NMTOKEN's, see (1)
nonNegativeInteger	0, 1, 2, ...	see (2)
nonPositiveInteger	... -2, -1, 0	see (2)
normalizedString	Confirm this is electric	see (3)
NOTATION		XML 1.0 NOTATION attribute type, see (1)
positiveInteger	1, 2, ...	see (2)
precisionDecimal		New in XSD 1.1, the precisionDecimal data type represents decimal numbers which retain precision
QName	po:USAddress	XML Namespace QName
short	-32768, ... -1, 0, 1, ... 32767	see (2)
string	Confirm this is electric
time	13:20:00.000, 13:20:00.000-05:00	see (2)
token	Confirm this is electric	see (4)
unsignedByte	0, 1, ... 255	see (2)
unsignedInt	0, 1, ...4294967295	see (2)
unsignedLong	0, 1, ... 18446744073709551615	see (2)
unsignedShort	0, 1, ... 65535	see (2)
yearMonthDuration	P0Y20M	New in XSD 1.1

Notes:

1. To retain compatibility between XML Schema and XML 1.0 DTDs, the simple types ID, IDREF, IDREFS, ENTITY, ENTITIES, NOTATION, NMTOKEN, NMTOKENS should only be used in attributes. 
2. A value of this type can be represented by more than one lexical format, e.g. 100 and 1.0E2 are both valid float formats representing "one hundred". However, rules have been established for this type that define a canonical lexical format, see XML Schema Part 2. 
3. Newline, tab and carriage-return characters in a normalizedString type are converted to space characters before schema processing.
4. As normalizedString, and adjacent space characters are collapsed to a single space character, and leading and trailing spaces are removed.
5. The "g" prefix signals time periods in the Gregorian calendar.