new tags

[Joe Maisel <Jo...@viacore.net>]

Hi...

I've just joined the mailing list, so I apologize if I'm either posting to
the wrong place, or in the wrong way, etc.  

I have _alot_ of servlet/jsp/taglib code I've written and been experimenting
with for about the past year.  I'm hoping to roll into an existing project.
Basically, I have developed an API which allows for total segregation of a
view from a controller.  The API is currently very simple and powerful, and
best used as a tag, but was initially developed to run in a servlet
framework which I'm currently reworking (I made it _way_ too complicated the
first time).  It has many applications besides just doing html for a
browser, such as providing a neutral form for data to be wrapped in, which
can then be delivered to views returning text/plain, html, xml, wml, etc.
While I understand that tag libs are an implementation of the mvc design
pattern and conceptually very similar to this, I have found them in their
current state to be less than they could be, so I have wrapped my API in a
tag and xml namespace to fill the things I feel are gaps.  It eliminates the
need for coding any java in a jsp, but still gives the advantages of rapid
development which make jsp a good thing.  Also it is (IMHO) a siginificant
workflow improvement over the way tag libs seem to work (at least at my
company, although I'm happy to admit that the tag lib implementation here
kinda sucks).  What I've ended up with is a component based xml, xslt system
I call "buffered xslt".  It allows for the advantages of using xslt at
runtime, but buffers the document produced in the transformation, greatly
improving performance and server load.  Basically, docs produced from a
transformation are parsed and internally use any of the 5 tags defined in my
namespace which control how values are rendered.  So, really the output from
an xslt becomes a 'component template'.  I guess it sounds confusing, but I
have a fair amount of documentation, and it's actually quite easy to use.
8)  Controllers can be shared between servlets and tags, and it is true
componentized development.  I think there are alot of good concepts in this
work, and I'm hoping to have something good come of it.  It's been my pet
passion for the past 12 months...  So, I guess I'm wondering if anyone out
there is interested, and if anyone can give me a heads up on how I can
submit the work to the Apache foundation for someone to look at.  8)  I
suppose if I had to summarize it easily it would be a mix of the xslt tag,
the input tag, and perhaps struts.  I'm just hoping someone will give it a
go, because I know it's quite cool (not that I'm biased or anything).....  

8)

Thanks for your time,

Joe Maisel

Re: new tags

[James Strachan <ja...@yahoo.co.uk>]

Hi Joe

Sounds interesting.

Have you seen the Maverick project, this seems to be along similar lines,
using XSLT pipelining and building a simple MVC framework around XSLT.

http://mav.sourceforge.net

There's also XTags which has tags for working with XSLT and XPath.

http://jakarta.apache.org/taglibs/doc/xtags-doc/intro.html

Maybe the best way forward is for you to put some more concrete
documentation or examples on some website somewhere and we can take it from
there.

James
----- Original Message -----
From: "Joe Maisel" <Jo...@viacore.net>
To: <ta...@jakarta.apache.org>
Sent: Monday, July 02, 2001 10:14 PM
Subject: new tags


> Hi...
>
> I've just joined the mailing list, so I apologize if I'm either posting to
> the wrong place, or in the wrong way, etc.
>
> I have _alot_ of servlet/jsp/taglib code I've written and been
experimenting
> with for about the past year.  I'm hoping to roll into an existing
project.
> Basically, I have developed an API which allows for total segregation of a
> view from a controller.  The API is currently very simple and powerful,
and
> best used as a tag, but was initially developed to run in a servlet
> framework which I'm currently reworking (I made it _way_ too complicated
the
> first time).  It has many applications besides just doing html for a
> browser, such as providing a neutral form for data to be wrapped in, which
> can then be delivered to views returning text/plain, html, xml, wml, etc.
> While I understand that tag libs are an implementation of the mvc design
> pattern and conceptually very similar to this, I have found them in their
> current state to be less than they could be, so I have wrapped my API in a
> tag and xml namespace to fill the things I feel are gaps.  It eliminates
the
> need for coding any java in a jsp, but still gives the advantages of rapid
> development which make jsp a good thing.  Also it is (IMHO) a siginificant
> workflow improvement over the way tag libs seem to work (at least at my
> company, although I'm happy to admit that the tag lib implementation here
> kinda sucks).  What I've ended up with is a component based xml, xslt
system
> I call "buffered xslt".  It allows for the advantages of using xslt at
> runtime, but buffers the document produced in the transformation, greatly
> improving performance and server load.  Basically, docs produced from a
> transformation are parsed and internally use any of the 5 tags defined in
my
> namespace which control how values are rendered.  So, really the output
from
> an xslt becomes a 'component template'.  I guess it sounds confusing, but
I
> have a fair amount of documentation, and it's actually quite easy to use.
> 8)  Controllers can be shared between servlets and tags, and it is true
> componentized development.  I think there are alot of good concepts in
this
> work, and I'm hoping to have something good come of it.  It's been my pet
> passion for the past 12 months...  So, I guess I'm wondering if anyone out
> there is interested, and if anyone can give me a heads up on how I can
> submit the work to the Apache foundation for someone to look at.  8)  I
> suppose if I had to summarize it easily it would be a mix of the xslt tag,
> the input tag, and perhaps struts.  I'm just hoping someone will give it a
> go, because I know it's quite cool (not that I'm biased or anything).....
>
> 8)
>
> Thanks for your time,
>
> Joe Maisel
>


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