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/LICENCE.txt and docs/LICENCE-Sarissa.txt for more information.
29
30 Dependencies
31 ------------
32
33 XSLTools has the following basic dependencies:
34
35 Package Release Information
36 ------- -------------------
37
38 libxml2dom 0.2
39 libxml2 Tested with 2.6.17
40 libxslt Tested with 1.1.12
41
42 The example Web applications require WebStack (release 0.10 or later).
43
44 New in XSLTools 0.2 (Changes since XSLTools 0.1)
45 ------------------------------------------------
46
47 Added XMLTable.
48
49 Notes on In-Page Update Functionality
50 -------------------------------------
51
52 Special note #1: Konqueror seems in certain cases to remember replaced form
53 content (when replaceChild is used to replace regions of the page which
54 include form elements). This causes the browser to believe that more form
55 fields exist on the page than actually do so, and subsequent form submissions
56 thus include the values of such removed fields. A special hack is in place to
57 disable form fields by changing their names, thus causing Konqueror to not
58 associate such fields with the real, active fields; this hack does not seem to
59 cause problems for Mozilla. This needs some investigation to determine in
60 exactly which circumstances the problem arises.
61
62 Special note #2: Konqueror also seems to crash if asked to find elements using
63 an empty 'id' attribute string. This needs some investigation to see if it
64 really is the getElementById call that causes the crash.
65
66 Various browsers (eg. Mozilla/Firefox, Konqueror) will not allow the
67 XMLHttpRequest in-page updates to function unless the URL used in the
68 requestUpdate JavaScript function is compatible with the URL at which the
69 browser finds the application. Currently, relative URLs are in use to avoid
70 this issue of compatibility, but should an absolute URL be deduced using the
71 WebStack API and then used, it may be possible that the values returned by
72 that API do not match the actual addresses entered into the address bar of the
73 browser.
74
75 To check the behaviour of the applications, it is possible to view the
76 document source of the pages served by applications and to verify that the
77 URLs mentioned in the JavaScript function calls (to 'requestUpdate') either be
78 a relative link or involve a URL similar to that which appears in the
79 browser's address bar. In some environments, the use of 'localhost' addresses
80 often confuses the browser and server; one workaround is to use real host
81 names or addresses instead of 'localhost'.
82
83 Choosing an element-path:
84
85 When specifying the "context" of the in-page update, one must imagine which
86 element the template fragment should operate within. If the template:id
87 attribute marks a particular section, then the element-path should be a path
88 to the applicable context element for that section in the complete template
89 document. Note that if a template:element attribute appears on the same
90 element as the template:id attribute then the element-path should refer to the
91 element specified in the template:element attribute.
92
93 Choosing where to put template:attribute, template:id and id:
94
95 When specifying the extent of a template fragment, one must be sure not to put
96 the template:id attribute on the same element as a template:attribute
97 annotation; otherwise, the generated code will be improperly extracted as a
98 fragment producing two versions of the element - one for when the specified
99 attribute is present, and one for when it is not present. Generally,
100 template:id and id can be placed on the same node, however.
101
102 Stable element ordering and element-path:
103
104 Within the element-path, the numbering of the elements will start at 1.
105 Therefore it is vital to choose a region of the form data structure with the
106 element-path which is isolated from surrounding elements whose positions would
107 otherwise be dependent on a stable ordering of elements, and whose processing
108 would be disrupted if some new elements suddenly appeared claiming the same
109 positions in the document. For example:
110
111 <item value=""> .../item$1/value
112 <type value=""/> .../item$1/type$1/value
113 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$2/value
114 </item>
115
116 In-page update...
117
118 <comment value=""/> .../item$1/comment$1/value
119
120 Notes on XSL
121 ------------
122
123 libxslt seems to be quite liberal on the definition of runtime parameters, in
124 that there is no apparent need to explicitly declare the corresponding global
125 variables in stylesheets. Whilst this is nice, we may eventually need to
126 detect such variables and add them in the preparation process.
127
128 Release Procedures
129 ------------------
130
131 Update the XSLOutput.py and XSLForms/__init__.py __version__ attributes.
132 Change the version number and package filename/directory in the documentation.
133 Change code examples in the documentation if appropriate.
134 Update the release notes (see above).
135 Check the setup.py file and ensure that all package directories are mentioned.
136 Tag, export.
137 Generate the API documentation.
138 Remove generated .pyc files: rm `find . -name "*.pyc"`
139 Archive, upload.
140 Upload the introductory documentation.
141 Update PyPI, PythonInfo Wiki, Vaults of Parnassus entries.
142
143 Generating the API Documentation
144 --------------------------------
145
146 In order to prepare the API documentation, it is necessary to generate some
147 Web pages from the Python source code. For this, the epydoc application must
148 be available on your system. Then, inside the XSLTools directory, run the
149 apidocs.sh tool script as follows:
150
151 ./tools/apidocs.sh
152
153 Some warnings may be generated by the script, but the result should be a new
154 apidocs directory within the XSLTools directory.