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