Re: Proposal for a Xalan-Java 2 Extensions library

[Gary L Peskin <ga...@firstech.com>]

Don --

A little over a month ago, you sent the list below to the list.  I
thought it would be a good idea to review the progress, mostly yours, on
completing these items.

Gary

Donald_Leslie@lotus.com wrote:
> Redirect
> Redirects output to multiple files (already ported to Xalan-Java 2 --
> org.apache.xalan.lib.Redirect.java).

Implemented.  Has a bug (shared with XalanJ1) if nothing is written
before the first node is redirected.  Need to suppress the
startDocument() call unless one was previously issued.

> nodeset(rtf)
> Casts a result tree fragment into a node-set (just posted to Xalan-Java 1
> by Gary L. Peskin and needs to be ported to Xalan-Java 2).

Done.

> sql library (XConnect, etc.)
> Connects to a JDBC database, performs queries, and returns "streamable"
> result sets (Needs some cleanup and more general support for the connection
> protocol).

Done.

> evaluate (expression)
> Allows the run-time construction and evaluation of XPath expressions.

Done. 

> group and item
> Provides efficient grouping of items with a common value.

To do.

> difference(ns1, ns2)
> Returns a node-set with the nodes in ns1 and not in ns2.

Done.

> distinct (ns1)
>  Returns a node-set containing nodes with distinct string value.

Done.

> has-same-nodes(ns1, ns2)
> Returns true if both node-sets contain same set of nodes.

Done.

> intersection(ns1, ns2)
> Returns node-set with all nodes that are in ns1 and in ns2 .

Done.

> type(??)
> Returns a string that represents the Schema or DTD type.

To do.  How is this supposed to work?

> to-date(string)
> Takes a string as input, and returns a long value representing the date.

To do.  What does the string represent?  Is it just a character version
of a date?  I think you can do this already pretty easily in java but we
could certainly add this.
 
> format-date(string, spec)
> Takes a date string, and formats it according to a specification.

To do.

> grep(??,??,??)
> Performs a grep function and returns the substring.

To do.

> for-each-token(??,??)
> Tokenizes a string, treats each token as a DOM Text node, and executes the
> sub-template.

Done.  This is called tokenize.  It just creats a node-set of text nodes
of the tokenized string.  You can use it in an apply-templates or a
for-each yourself.

So, from your list we have left:
-group and item
-type
-to-date
-format-date
-grep

If anyone is interested in getting involved, this is a good opportunity
to learn about extensions and contribute to the project.

Gary