paulb@104 | 1 | Introduction
|
paulb@104 | 2 | ------------
|
paulb@76 | 3 |
|
paulb@104 | 4 | XSLTools is a collection of modules and packages facilitating the development
|
paulb@104 | 5 | of applications based on XML, XSL stylesheets and transformations, notably Web
|
paulb@104 | 6 | applications involving complicated Web forms potentially consisting of
|
paulb@104 | 7 | editable hierarchical structures and potentially involving "live" or "in-page"
|
paulb@104 | 8 | dynamic updates to portions of those Web forms.
|
paulb@28 | 9 |
|
paulb@109 | 10 | Quick Start
|
paulb@109 | 11 | -----------
|
paulb@109 | 12 |
|
paulb@109 | 13 | Try running the demo:
|
paulb@109 | 14 |
|
paulb@109 | 15 | python tools/demo.py
|
paulb@109 | 16 |
|
paulb@109 | 17 | An introductory guide to creating applications can be found in the docs
|
paulb@109 | 18 | directory - see docs/index.html for the start page.
|
paulb@109 | 19 |
|
paulb@109 | 20 | Contact, Copyright and Licence Information
|
paulb@109 | 21 | ------------------------------------------
|
paulb@109 | 22 |
|
paulb@109 | 23 | The current Web page for XSLTools at the time of release is:
|
paulb@109 | 24 |
|
paulb@109 | 25 | http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/XSLTools.html
|
paulb@109 | 26 |
|
paulb@109 | 27 | Copyright and licence information can be found in the docs directory - see
|
paulb@115 | 28 | docs/LICENCE.txt and docs/LICENCE-Sarissa.txt for more information.
|
paulb@109 | 29 |
|
paulb@104 | 30 | Dependencies
|
paulb@104 | 31 | ------------
|
paulb@104 | 32 |
|
paulb@104 | 33 | XSLTools has the following basic dependencies:
|
paulb@28 | 34 |
|
paulb@104 | 35 | Package Release Information
|
paulb@104 | 36 | ------- -------------------
|
paulb@104 | 37 |
|
paulb@104 | 38 | libxml2dom 0.2
|
paulb@185 | 39 | libxml2 Tested with 2.6.17
|
paulb@185 | 40 | libxslt Tested with 1.1.12
|
paulb@28 | 41 |
|
paulb@104 | 42 | The example Web applications require WebStack (release 0.10 or later).
|
paulb@104 | 43 |
|
paulb@104 | 44 | Notes on In-Page Update Functionality
|
paulb@104 | 45 | -------------------------------------
|
paulb@28 | 46 |
|
paulb@185 | 47 | Special note #1: Konqueror seems in certain cases to remember replaced form
|
paulb@185 | 48 | content (when replaceChild is used to replace regions of the page which
|
paulb@185 | 49 | include form elements). This causes the browser to believe that more form
|
paulb@185 | 50 | fields exist on the page than actually do so, and subsequent form submissions
|
paulb@185 | 51 | thus include the values of such removed fields. A special hack is in place to
|
paulb@185 | 52 | disable form fields by changing their names, thus causing Konqueror to not
|
paulb@185 | 53 | associate such fields with the real, active fields; this hack does not seem to
|
paulb@185 | 54 | cause problems for Mozilla. This needs some investigation to determine in
|
paulb@185 | 55 | exactly which circumstances the problem arises.
|
paulb@185 | 56 |
|
paulb@185 | 57 | Special note #2: Konqueror also seems to crash if asked to find elements using
|
paulb@185 | 58 | an empty 'id' attribute string. This needs some investigation to see if it
|
paulb@185 | 59 | really is the getElementById call that causes the crash.
|
paulb@125 | 60 |
|
paulb@104 | 61 | Various browsers (eg. Mozilla/Firefox, Konqueror) will not allow the
|
paulb@185 | 62 | XMLHttpRequest in-page updates to function unless the URL used in the
|
paulb@185 | 63 | requestUpdate JavaScript function is compatible with the URL at which the
|
paulb@185 | 64 | browser finds the application. Currently, relative URLs are in use to avoid
|
paulb@185 | 65 | this issue of compatibility, but should an absolute URL be deduced using the
|
paulb@185 | 66 | WebStack API and then used, it may be possible that the values returned by
|
paulb@185 | 67 | that API do not match the actual addresses entered into the address bar of the
|
paulb@185 | 68 | browser.
|
paulb@28 | 69 |
|
paulb@104 | 70 | To check the behaviour of the applications, it is possible to view the
|
paulb@104 | 71 | document source of the pages served by applications and to verify that the
|
paulb@185 | 72 | URLs mentioned in the JavaScript function calls (to 'requestUpdate') either be
|
paulb@185 | 73 | a relative link or involve a URL similar to that which appears in the
|
paulb@185 | 74 | browser's address bar. In some environments, the use of 'localhost' addresses
|
paulb@185 | 75 | often confuses the browser and server; one workaround is to use real host
|
paulb@185 | 76 | names or addresses instead of 'localhost'.
|
paulb@155 | 77 |
|
paulb@166 | 78 | Choosing an element-path:
|
paulb@166 | 79 |
|
paulb@166 | 80 | When specifying the "context" of the in-page update, one must imagine which
|
paulb@166 | 81 | element the template fragment should operate within. If the template:id
|
paulb@166 | 82 | attribute marks a particular section, then the element-path should be a path
|
paulb@166 | 83 | to the applicable context element for that section in the complete template
|
paulb@166 | 84 | document. Note that if a template:element attribute appears on the same
|
paulb@166 | 85 | element as the template:id attribute then the element-path should refer to the
|
paulb@166 | 86 | element specified in the template:element attribute.
|
paulb@166 | 87 |
|
paulb@166 | 88 | Choosing where to put template:attribute, template:id and id:
|
paulb@166 | 89 |
|
paulb@166 | 90 | When specifying the extent of a template fragment, one must be sure not to put
|
paulb@166 | 91 | the template:id attribute on the same element as a template:attribute
|
paulb@166 | 92 | annotation; otherwise, the generated code will be improperly extracted as a
|
paulb@166 | 93 | fragment producing two versions of the element - one for when the specified
|
paulb@166 | 94 | attribute is present, and one for when it is not present. Generally,
|
paulb@166 | 95 | template:id and id can be placed on the same node, however.
|
paulb@173 | 96 |
|
paulb@173 | 97 | Stable element ordering and element-path:
|
paulb@173 | 98 |
|
paulb@173 | 99 | Within the element-path, the numbering of the elements will start at 1.
|
paulb@173 | 100 | Therefore it is vital to choose a region of the form data structure with the
|
paulb@173 | 101 | element-path which is isolated from surrounding elements whose positions would
|
paulb@173 | 102 | otherwise be dependent on a stable ordering of elements, and whose processing
|
paulb@173 | 103 | would be disrupted if some new elements suddenly appeared claiming the same
|
paulb@173 | 104 | positions in the document. For example:
|
paulb@173 | 105 |
|
paulb@173 | 106 | <item value=""> .../item$1/value
|
paulb@173 | 107 | <type value=""/> .../item$1/type$1/value
|
paulb@173 | 108 | <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$2/value
|
paulb@173 | 109 | </item>
|
paulb@173 | 110 |
|
paulb@173 | 111 | In-page update...
|
paulb@173 | 112 |
|
paulb@173 | 113 | <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$1/value
|
paulb@173 | 114 |
|
paulb@173 | 115 | Notes on XSL
|
paulb@173 | 116 | ------------
|
paulb@173 | 117 |
|
paulb@173 | 118 | libxslt seems to be quite liberal on the definition of runtime parameters, in
|
paulb@173 | 119 | that there is no apparent need to explicitly declare the corresponding global
|
paulb@173 | 120 | variables in stylesheets. Whilst this is nice, we may eventually need to
|
paulb@173 | 121 | detect such variables and add them in the preparation process.
|
paulb@184 | 122 |
|
paulb@184 | 123 | Release Procedures
|
paulb@184 | 124 | ------------------
|
paulb@184 | 125 |
|
paulb@184 | 126 | Update the XSLOutput.py and XSLForms/__init__.py __version__ attributes.
|
paulb@184 | 127 | Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
|
paulb@184 | 128 | Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
|
paulb@184 | 129 | Update the release notes (see above).
|
paulb@184 | 130 | Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
|
paulb@184 | 131 | Tag, export.
|
paulb@184 | 132 | Generate the API documentation.
|
paulb@184 | 133 | Remove generated .pyc files: rm `find . -name "*.pyc"`
|
paulb@184 | 134 | Archive, upload.
|
paulb@184 | 135 | Upload the introductory documentation.
|
paulb@184 | 136 | Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
|
paulb@184 | 137 |
|
paulb@184 | 138 | Generating the API Documentation
|
paulb@184 | 139 | --------------------------------
|
paulb@184 | 140 |
|
paulb@184 | 141 | In order to prepare the API documentation, it is necessary to generate some
|
paulb@184 | 142 | Web pages from the Python source code. For this, the epydoc application must
|
paulb@184 | 143 | be available on your system. Then, inside the XSLTools directory, run the
|
paulb@184 | 144 | apidocs.sh tool script as follows:
|
paulb@184 | 145 |
|
paulb@184 | 146 | ./tools/apidocs.sh
|
paulb@184 | 147 |
|
paulb@184 | 148 | Some warnings may be generated by the script, but the result should be a new
|
paulb@184 | 149 | apidocs directory within the XSLTools directory.
|