[RFC] XML/Apache Templating with mod_perl

[Matt Sergeant <ma...@sergeant.org>]

I've just thought of a really cool idea, that would be rather easy to
implement...

First of all, when someone requests an XML document, it looks for the
<?xml-stylesheet?> processing instruction, according to the w3c
specs. We parse the "type" attribute and get:

text/xsl
or
notxslt
or
Apache::MyPageProcessor

i.e. the full pi would be:
	<?xml-stylesheet
		href="/somestyle.sty"
		type="Apache::MyPageProcessor"
	?>

Then we have either a mapping table for "type" => module, or just try and
load the module specified by "type". If we find no matching module we
return DECLINED (for the Perl-XML list, this means we simply let the next
apache module in the chain handle the file). If we find a module, we call
Module->handler($r) (or Module::handler($r) depending on the prototype).

The idea is a plug-and-play XML stylesheet processing system, where you
can just drop in a new templating module and start creating XML files for
that module, without having to worry about server configuration or
changing anything (unless you need to change the type=>module mapping -
which we'd stick in the httpd.conf - so a reload is required for changes
to that).

Thoughts? Should I go ahead? (it's not much work - I've already got the
processing instruction parsing done).

-- 
<Matt/>

Fastnet Software Ltd. High Performance Web Specialists
Providing mod_perl, XML, Sybase and Oracle solutions
Email for training and consultancy availability.
http://sergeant.org http://xml.sergeant.org

Re: [RFC] XML/Apache Templating with mod_perl

[Matt Sergeant <ma...@sergeant.org>]

On Tue, 25 Apr 2000, raptor wrote:

> Yeah that will be really cool... can you inform me about the progress on
> this, if you made something ... I thought about something similar not exact but
> some sort of processor to handle XML(XSLT) -> HTML conversations +
> some sort of caching tehnique, but I also like this approach....something like
> this will help easy integrate XML stuff in the current scheme of producing
> final HTML....

In case you missed it - I just announce the Apache XML Delivery Toolkit to
both the modperl list and the Perl-XML list. With it you can develop an
XSLT Apache module in 13 lines of code (no caching, but it works).

-- 
<Matt/>

Fastnet Software Ltd. High Performance Web Specialists
Providing mod_perl, XML, Sybase and Oracle solutions
Email for training and consultancy availability.
http://sergeant.org http://xml.sergeant.org

RE: [RFC] XML/Apache Templating with mod_perl

[Gerald Richter <ri...@ecos.de>]

>
> Yeah that will be really cool... can you inform me about the progress on
> this, if you made something ... I thought about something similar
> not exact but
> some sort of processor to handle XML(XSLT) -> HTML conversations +
> some sort of caching tehnique, but I also like this
> approach....something like
> this will help easy integrate XML stuff in the current scheme of producing
> final HTML....
>
Embperl 2.0 will be able to do such things, but it's a long way to go and
will take some time until I have implemented this...

Gerald



-------------------------------------------------------------
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Internetconnect * Webserver/-design/-datenbanken * Consulting

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-------------------------------------------------------------

Re: [RFC] XML/Apache Templating with mod_perl

[raptor <ra...@unacs.bg>]

Yeah that will be really cool... can you inform me about the progress on
this, if you made something ... I thought about something similar not exact but
some sort of processor to handle XML(XSLT) -> HTML conversations +
some sort of caching tehnique, but I also like this approach....something like
this will help easy integrate XML stuff in the current scheme of producing
final HTML....

see ya
=====
iVAN
raptor@unacs.bg
=====