off topic: XML Request Transforms

Hi everyone,

I know this is off topic... but what really is on topic here anymore?

I've got an idea that I've been working on and last time I looked
there were still a lot of smart people subscribed here. I'm posting
here so that they they might take a look at my idea and I can gauge
whether it is, or is not, worthwhile pursuing.


My idea is for a webapp description syntax called XML Request
Transformations, or XRT (or xsltpages if you want to have a short
explanatory name).

XRT is a way of using XSLT to describe the top level bit of your
webapp. In effect it's a bit like a web.xml or an Apache config file.

But it's much more than that.

With XRT you can everything that you can do with mod-rewrite but much
cleaner.

XRT can handle dispatch based on paths (like in a web.xml) or dispatch
based on other things (like path AND method).

XRT lets you clearly show how a particular request maps to a
particular resource representation.

XRT can dynamically load code extension functions written in python,
this is a limitation of the code right now... I want to write a C
version that can call code in any language.

Extension functions don't need to know anything about XML. They can
return their data in JSON style (as Hashtables, Lists, etc...) and
have XRT auto-convert it to XML.


This is an extreemly agile way of building webapps. Unlike rails, it
actually solves the bits of webapp building that I find frustrating.

You can build a demo webapp by starting with a bunch of XML files and
then replacing them with extension functions as you add more dynamic
functionality.

XRT also makes it possible to think about really big webapps built
with large teams modelled along traditional lines:

- designers come up with XSLT transforms of XML to HTML/CSS
- junior programmers write extension functions (remember, these is no
  XML/Xpath specific stuff about XRT extensions)
- senior programmers plug all this into XRT



I appreciate there is the issue of XSLT knowledge... but IDEs
supporting XRT should be easy to build and XSLT knowledge is not as
minimal as you'd think.

Anyway... here's the links:

  http://www.nongnu.org/xsltpages/
  http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/xsltpages
  http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/xsltpages/xsltpages-0.02.tgz



Nic Ferrier


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