1 Introduction
2 ------------
3
4 XSLTools is a collection of modules and packages facilitating the development
5 of applications based on XML, XSL stylesheets and transformations, notably Web
6 applications involving complicated Web forms potentially consisting of
7 editable hierarchical structures and potentially involving "live" or "in-page"
8 dynamic updates to portions of those Web forms.
9
10 Quick Start
11 -----------
12
13 Try running the demo:
14
15 python tools/demo.py
16
17 An introductory guide to creating applications can be found in the docs
18 directory - see docs/index.html for the start page.
19
20 Contact, Copyright and Licence Information
21 ------------------------------------------
22
23 The current Web page for XSLTools at the time of release is:
24
25 http://www.boddie.org.uk/python/XSLTools.html
26
27 Copyright and licence information can be found in the docs directory - see
28 docs/COPYING.txt, docs/LICENCE.txt and docs/LICENCE-Sarissa.txt for more
29 information.
30
31 Dependencies
32 ------------
33
34 XSLTools has the following basic dependencies:
35
36 Package Release Information
37 ------- -------------------
38
39 libxml2dom 0.2.1
40 libxml2 Tested with 2.6.17
41 libxslt Tested with 1.1.12
42
43 The example Web applications require WebStack (release 1.0 or later).
44
45 New in XSLTools 0.2 (Changes since XSLTools 0.1)
46 ------------------------------------------------
47
48 * Made a new XSLTools package and moved XSLOutput into it.
49 * Added XMLCalendar and XMLTable (to the XSLTools package).
50 * Changed in-page requests to contain proper POST data.
51 * Updated the code to work with WebStack 1.0 changes.
52 * Added a dictionary (or word lookup) example application.
53 * Added template:if to XSLForms.
54 * Added element-path and url-encode XSLForms extension functions.
55 * Improved Unicode support in the XSLForms extension functions.
56 * Added Debian package support.
57 * Added missing COPYING.txt file.
58 * Renamed the scripts to avoid naming issues in system-wide installations.
59
60 Notes on In-Page Update Functionality
61 -------------------------------------
62
63 Special note #1: Konqueror seems in certain cases to remember replaced form
64 content (when replaceChild is used to replace regions of the page which
65 include form elements). This causes the browser to believe that more form
66 fields exist on the page than actually do so, and subsequent form submissions
67 thus include the values of such removed fields. A special hack is in place to
68 disable form fields by changing their names, thus causing Konqueror to not
69 associate such fields with the real, active fields; this hack does not seem to
70 cause problems for Mozilla. This needs some investigation to determine in
71 exactly which circumstances the problem arises.
72
73 Special note #2: Konqueror also seems to crash if asked to find elements using
74 an empty 'id' attribute string. This needs some investigation to see if it
75 really is the getElementById call that causes the crash.
76
77 Special note #3: Konqueror's XMLHttpRequest seems to append null characters to
78 the end of field values. Attempting to prune them before the request is sent
79 fails with a function like the following:
80
81 function fixValue(fieldValue) {
82 if (fieldValue.length == 0) {
83 return fieldValue;
84 } else if (fieldValue[fieldValue.length - 1] == '\0') {
85 return fieldValue.substr(0, fieldValue.length - 1);
86 } else {
87 return fieldValue;
88 }
89 }
90
91 This may be because it is the entire message that is terminated with the null
92 character, and that this happens only upon sending the message. Consequently,
93 some frameworks (notably mod_python) do not support in-page functionality when
94 used from Konqueror.
95
96 Various browsers (eg. Mozilla/Firefox, Konqueror) will not allow the
97 XMLHttpRequest in-page updates to function unless the URL used in the
98 requestUpdate JavaScript function is compatible with the URL at which the
99 browser finds the application. Currently, relative URLs are in use to avoid
100 this issue of compatibility, but should an absolute URL be deduced using the
101 WebStack API and then used, it may be possible that the values returned by
102 that API do not match the actual addresses entered into the address bar of the
103 browser.
104
105 To check the behaviour of the applications, it is possible to view the
106 document source of the pages served by applications and to verify that the
107 URLs mentioned in the JavaScript function calls (to 'requestUpdate') either be
108 a relative link or involve a URL similar to that which appears in the
109 browser's address bar. In some environments, the use of 'localhost' addresses
110 often confuses the browser and server; one workaround is to use real host
111 names or addresses instead of 'localhost'.
112
113 Choosing an element-path:
114
115 When specifying the "context" of the in-page update, one must imagine which
116 element the template fragment should operate within. If the template:id
117 attribute marks a particular section, then the element-path should be a path
118 to the applicable context element for that section in the complete template
119 document. Note that if a template:element attribute appears on the same
120 element as the template:id attribute then the element-path should refer to the
121 element specified in the template:element attribute.
122
123 Choosing where to put template:attribute, template:id and id:
124
125 When specifying the extent of a template fragment, one must be sure not to put
126 the template:id attribute on the same element as a template:attribute
127 annotation; otherwise, the generated code will be improperly extracted as a
128 fragment producing two versions of the element - one for when the specified
129 attribute is present, and one for when it is not present. Generally,
130 template:id and id can be placed on the same node, however.
131
132 Stable element ordering and element-path:
133
134 Within the element-path, the numbering of the elements will start at 1.
135 Therefore it is vital to choose a region of the form data structure with the
136 element-path which is isolated from surrounding elements whose positions would
137 otherwise be dependent on a stable ordering of elements, and whose processing
138 would be disrupted if some new elements suddenly appeared claiming the same
139 positions in the document. For example:
140
141 <item value=""> .../item$1/value
142 <type value=""/> .../item$1/type$1/value
143 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$2/value
144 </item>
145
146 In-page update...
147
148 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$1/value
149
150 Notes on XSL
151 ------------
152
153 libxslt seems to be quite liberal on the definition of runtime parameters, in
154 that there is no apparent need to explicitly declare the corresponding global
155 variables in stylesheets. Whilst this is nice, we may eventually need to
156 detect such variables and add them in the preparation process.
157
158 Release Procedures
159 ------------------
160
161 Update the XSLTools/__init__.py and XSLForms/__init__.py __version__
162 attributes.
163 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
164 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
165 Update the release notes (see above).
166 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
167 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file and in the package
168 changelog (and other files).
169 Tag, export.
170 Generate the API documentation.
171 Remove generated .pyc files: rm `find . -name "*.pyc"`
172 Archive, upload.
173 Upload the introductory documentation.
174 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
175
176 Generating the API Documentation
177 --------------------------------
178
179 In order to prepare the API documentation, it is necessary to generate some
180 Web pages from the Python source code. For this, the epydoc application must
181 be available on your system. Then, inside the distribution directory, run the
182 apidocs.sh tool script as follows:
183
184 ./tools/apidocs.sh
185
186 Some warnings may be generated by the script, but the result should be a new
187 apidocs directory within the distribution directory.
188
189 Making Packages
190 ---------------
191
192 To make Debian packages:
193
194 1. Create new package directories under packages/debian if necessary.
195 2. Make a symbolic link in the distribution's root directory to keep the
196 Debian tools happy:
197
198 ln -s packages/debian/python2.4-xsltools/debian/
199
200 3. Run the package builder:
201
202 dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
203
204 4. Locate and tidy up the packages in the parent directory of the
205 distribution's root directory.