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