In Minecraft, most objects are identified by unique names. E.g., items use their registry name to be uniquely identified and there can't exist more than one item with the same registry name.

Most names in Minecraft follow a rigid structure, identified by a string with a namespace and a path separated by a colon (e.g. minecraft:iron_ingot, where minecraft is the namespace and iron_ingot is the path). In CraftTweaker, most of these names are represented as raw strings, but within Boson this is frowned upon. In fact, the usage of a raw string may confuse people on whether a method call expects a string with a namespace or without. For this reason, Boson separated the usage of non-namespaced strings and namespaced ones.

Non-namespaced strings are represented as instances of string, among all the Boson APIs. For more information, refer to the ZenScript documentation.

Namespaced strings are represented as instances of NameSpacedString, among all the Boson APIs. For more information on how to obtain such strings, refer to the next section.

The NameSpacedString class resides in the net.thesilkminer.mc.boson.zen.naming package.

There are two ways of creating a NameSpacedString: using the factory method or casting a string.

The factory method is the suggested approach. Due to it being a static method, it can be invoked directly on the class instance. The following is the method signature and an example of its usage:

ZenScript
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function from(nameSpace as string?, path as string) as NameSpacedString;

ZenScript
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NameSpacedString.from("minecraft", "iron_ingot"); // equivalent to minecraft:iron_ingot
NameSpacedString.from(null, "iron_ingot"); // uses default namespace 'minecraft'

The casting way relies instead on an explicit cast from a string to a NameSpacedString using the as operator in ZenScript:

ZenScript
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"minecraft:iron_ingot" as NameSpacedString;

A NameSpacedString provides read-only access to both its namespace and its path via properties:

Property Name	Type	Description
Property Name nameSpace	Type string	Description Gets the namespace portion of the NameSpacedString (e.g. minecraft)
Property Name path	Type string	Description Gets the path portion of the NameSpacedString (e.g. iron_ingot)

A NameSpacedString can be converted back into a regular string by using the asString method. The following is the method signature and an example of its usage:

ZenScript
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function asString() as string;

ZenScript
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val nss = NameSpacedString("minecraft", "iron_ingot");
println(nss.asString()); // Prints 'minecraft:iron_ingot' to the log