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Re: Web sites: building common components centrally

Subject: Re: Web sites: building common components centrally
From: Robert Koberg <rob@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Sat, 27 Nov 2004 08:19:31 -0800
flash xsl
Hi,

We (an application service provider CMS (livestoryboard.com) based on XML/XSL.) do something like the following...

Each client project usually defines a layouts.xsl[1] that imports several XSLs. The client project can use the applcation defaults for the imports or can extend/override them. You would use (in java) a custom URIResolver to check the client project's dir structure for a file, if not there fallback to the app's default

To overrride an import, the client project could either import their own uniquely named xsl file while removing the import for the override or create the file (with the same name as the one to override) in the project's filesystem.

To extend an existing imported XSL, the client would create the template they want to override from the default, but still use the default file. For example, head.xsl[2] has a named template that calls other templates. If you want to extend the head.xsl without overriding it completely you could define one of the named templates in the layouts.xsl or some other imported XSL.

Hope this makes sense.

best,
-Rob


[1] A layouts.xsl might look like:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet exclude-result-prefixes="s" version="1.0" xmlns:s="http://livestoryboard.com/schemas/lsb" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<!--
XSL will be looked first relative to this XSL file. If it is not found, the system will lookup an LSB default. If nothing is found it will will return an error (null).
-->
<xsl:import href="head.xsl"/>
<xsl:import href="banner.xsl"/>
<xsl:import href="top-level-nav.xsl"/>
<xsl:import href="second-level-nav.xsl"/>
<xsl:import href="topics.xsl"/>
<xsl:import href="footer.xsl"/>


  <xsl:import href="components/indexer.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="components/metadata.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="components/toc.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="components/pager.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="components/snailtrail.xsl"/>

  <xsl:import href="content.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="table.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="flash.xsl"/>

  <xsl:import href="global_definitions.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="metadata_nodesets.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="linking.xsl"/>
  <xsl:import href="aggregator.xsl"/>

  <xsl:output
    doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"

doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"
    encoding="utf-8"
    indent="no"
    method="xml"
    omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>

  <xsl:template match="/">
    <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
      <xsl:call-template name="head"/>
      <body class="{$lsb_folder_nodeset/@name}">
        <xsl:choose>
          <xsl:when test="$user.focus.layout='default'">
            <xsl:call-template name="default"/>
          </xsl:when>
          <!--<xsl:when test="$user.focus.layout='home'">
            <xsl:call-template name="home"/>
          </xsl:when>
          <xsl:when test="$user.focus.layout='topics'">
            <xsl:call-template name="topics"/>
          </xsl:when>
          <xsl:when test="$user.focus.layout='screenshots'">
            <xsl:call-template name="screenshots"/>
          </xsl:when>-->
          <xsl:otherwise/>
        </xsl:choose>
      </body>
    </html>
  </xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="default">
<xsl:call-template name="banner"/>
<xsl:call-template name="tabs"/>
<div id="content-main">
<xsl:if test="$lsb_folder_nodeset/@snailtrail">
<xsl:call-template name="snailtrail"/>
</xsl:if>
<h1>
<xsl:value-of select="$focus_title"/>
</h1>
<xsl:apply-templates mode="load_regions" select="$lsb_folder_metadata/s:regions/s:region[@name='wideColumn']/*"/>
<xsl:apply-templates mode="load_regions" select="$lsb_focus_metadata/s:regions/s:region[@name='wideColumn']/*"/>
<xsl:if test="$lsb_folder_nodeset/@pager">
<xsl:call-template name="pager"/>
</xsl:if>
</div>
<div id="content-sidebar">
<div id="nav-header">
<xsl:variable name="href">
<xsl:apply-templates select="$lsb_folder_nodeset" mode="get_page_href"/>
</xsl:variable>
<a href="{$href}">
<xsl:value-of select="$lsb_folder_nodeset/@label"/>
</a>
<xsl:text>:</xsl:text>
</div>
<xsl:call-template name="nav"/>
<xsl:apply-templates mode="load_regions" select="$lsb_folder_metadata/s:regions/s:region[@name='narrowCol']/*"/>
<xsl:apply-templates mode="load_regions" select="$lsb_focus_metadata/s:regions/s:region[@name='narrowCol']/*"/>
<br class="brkr"/>
</div>
<xsl:call-template name="footer"/>
</xsl:template>


</xsl:stylesheet>


[2] head.xsl's main named template:



<xsl:template name="head"> <head>

      <xsl:call-template name="head-misc-before"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="head-css"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="head-favicon"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="head-metadata-misc"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="head-metadata-dc"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="head-title"/>
      <xsl:call-template name="head-misc-after"/>

    </head>
  </xsl:template>




Frans Englich wrote:



Hello,


I am working on a project which as user interface has a web site. The software is information intensive and produces much data. What the website consists of is plain informative documents(such as FAQs), and various data files which are statically produced. The browser-sophisticance requirement for solving my problem can be fairly high since the userbase is software developers; support for client side XSLT transformation can be assumed, if it's deemed necessary.

The problem I have is of plain web design: How do I in the best way insert common elements, such as footers and navigation, into every file which is part of the website?

Currently, my plan is to write/produce all documents in XHTML, and associate every file with an XSLT which adds the common parts such as base CSS, headers, navigation, footers, and so forth; the styleheet would "merge" the document with the common elements.

To me it sounds practical, the documents are standalone, valid XHTML documents(they can be validated and tested independently) and the website framework is centrally controlled. Bandwidth can be saved by doing the transformation at the client. Perhaps it is restraining if the navigation is somehow dynamic/context bound, affected by the document, I cannot yet tell.

But this is a common problem -- how do people usually solve this?

I've worked with a PHP framework, where documents were written in php-tags+body content + php tags, and the php tags then inserted the XML declaration, navigation, and head, html tags, and so forth(the documents were not well-formed). When the documents needed to affect the navigation, such as to add a menu, they simply declared PHP variables. Apart from that, this copy&paste solution was of course a major pain; impossible to validate the documents, and just think about extending or integrating an XML technology, such as Docbook..

I might add that I have no dependency on a procedural server-side language, and it would be nice if it stayed that way.

How do people usually solve this insert-navigation-on-every-page problem? What would be a suitable solution for my case?

I guess the subject qualifies as off-topic, to some degree.


Cheers,


Frans

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