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 0.10 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 XMLTable (to the XSLTools package).
50 Changed in-page requests to contain proper POST data.
51 Added Debian package support.
52 Added missing COPYING.txt file.
53 Renamed the scripts to avoid naming issues in system-wide installations.
54 Added template:if to XSLForms.
55
56 Notes on In-Page Update Functionality
57 -------------------------------------
58
59 Special note #1: Konqueror seems in certain cases to remember replaced form
60 content (when replaceChild is used to replace regions of the page which
61 include form elements). This causes the browser to believe that more form
62 fields exist on the page than actually do so, and subsequent form submissions
63 thus include the values of such removed fields. A special hack is in place to
64 disable form fields by changing their names, thus causing Konqueror to not
65 associate such fields with the real, active fields; this hack does not seem to
66 cause problems for Mozilla. This needs some investigation to determine in
67 exactly which circumstances the problem arises.
68
69 Special note #2: Konqueror also seems to crash if asked to find elements using
70 an empty 'id' attribute string. This needs some investigation to see if it
71 really is the getElementById call that causes the crash.
72
73 Special note #3: Konqueror's XMLHttpRequest seems to append null bytes to the
74 end of field values.
75
76 Various browsers (eg. Mozilla/Firefox, Konqueror) will not allow the
77 XMLHttpRequest in-page updates to function unless the URL used in the
78 requestUpdate JavaScript function is compatible with the URL at which the
79 browser finds the application. Currently, relative URLs are in use to avoid
80 this issue of compatibility, but should an absolute URL be deduced using the
81 WebStack API and then used, it may be possible that the values returned by
82 that API do not match the actual addresses entered into the address bar of the
83 browser.
84
85 To check the behaviour of the applications, it is possible to view the
86 document source of the pages served by applications and to verify that the
87 URLs mentioned in the JavaScript function calls (to 'requestUpdate') either be
88 a relative link or involve a URL similar to that which appears in the
89 browser's address bar. In some environments, the use of 'localhost' addresses
90 often confuses the browser and server; one workaround is to use real host
91 names or addresses instead of 'localhost'.
92
93 Choosing an element-path:
94
95 When specifying the "context" of the in-page update, one must imagine which
96 element the template fragment should operate within. If the template:id
97 attribute marks a particular section, then the element-path should be a path
98 to the applicable context element for that section in the complete template
99 document. Note that if a template:element attribute appears on the same
100 element as the template:id attribute then the element-path should refer to the
101 element specified in the template:element attribute.
102
103 Choosing where to put template:attribute, template:id and id:
104
105 When specifying the extent of a template fragment, one must be sure not to put
106 the template:id attribute on the same element as a template:attribute
107 annotation; otherwise, the generated code will be improperly extracted as a
108 fragment producing two versions of the element - one for when the specified
109 attribute is present, and one for when it is not present. Generally,
110 template:id and id can be placed on the same node, however.
111
112 Stable element ordering and element-path:
113
114 Within the element-path, the numbering of the elements will start at 1.
115 Therefore it is vital to choose a region of the form data structure with the
116 element-path which is isolated from surrounding elements whose positions would
117 otherwise be dependent on a stable ordering of elements, and whose processing
118 would be disrupted if some new elements suddenly appeared claiming the same
119 positions in the document. For example:
120
121 <item value=""> .../item$1/value
122 <type value=""/> .../item$1/type$1/value
123 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$2/value
124 </item>
125
126 In-page update...
127
128 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$1/value
129
130 Notes on XSL
131 ------------
132
133 libxslt seems to be quite liberal on the definition of runtime parameters, in
134 that there is no apparent need to explicitly declare the corresponding global
135 variables in stylesheets. Whilst this is nice, we may eventually need to
136 detect such variables and add them in the preparation process.
137
138 Release Procedures
139 ------------------
140
141 Update the XSLTools/__init__.py and XSLForms/__init__.py __version__
142 attributes.
143 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
144 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
145 Update the release notes (see above).
146 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
147 Check the release information in the PKG-INFO file and in the package
148 changelog (and other files).
149 Tag, export.
150 Generate the API documentation.
151 Remove generated .pyc files: rm `find . -name "*.pyc"`
152 Archive, upload.
153 Upload the introductory documentation.
154 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
155
156 Generating the API Documentation
157 --------------------------------
158
159 In order to prepare the API documentation, it is necessary to generate some
160 Web pages from the Python source code. For this, the epydoc application must
161 be available on your system. Then, inside the XSLTools directory, run the
162 apidocs.sh tool script as follows:
163
164 ./tools/apidocs.sh
165
166 Some warnings may be generated by the script, but the result should be a new
167 apidocs directory within the XSLTools directory.