More on stylesheets

For higher-level resources, like <ACoffeeEditor>, you will often want to create a merged HTML representation that contains state from the component resources. This is easily done using XSLT's document() function.

Requesting resource representations with document()

ACoffeeEditor.xsl creates a representation of a particular coffee, including the coffee's name, current price, and a form for setting the price. The XML only contains a pointer to the <Coffee> resource and the <SetAPrice> resource. The following XML is returned by the Colombian <ACoffeeEditor> resource.

<list>
<doc schema="http://waterken.com/coffeebreak/ACoffeeEditor">
    <viewer schema="http://waterken.com/doc/pointer/Link">
        <target>hd6ypn3pse2cse27vuytwjyy2q</target>
    </viewer>
    <updater schema="http://waterken.com/doc/pointer/Link">
        <target>sfyisoakazbplsh7xnxek6ogaa</target>
    </updater>
</doc>
</list>
            

The viewer element points to the <Coffee> resource. The updater element points to the <SetAPrice> resource.

To get the name and price, ACoffeeEditor.xsl must use a document() call. document() enables the XSLT to get an additional resource representation. The stylesheet uses a document() call to fetch the <Coffee> resource linked to by the viewer element:

<xsl:apply-templates select="document(viewer/target)" mode="viewer" />
            

As described in Applying a custom stylesheet, all template matches should be done by type. XML fetched with a document() call is no exception. Using a mode prevents confusion between ambiguous templates.

Using forms to POST to resources

ACoffeeEditor.xsl creates an HTML FORM for setting the price of a coffee. The XSLT for creating the price form is:

<form method="POST" action="?path=updater/">
    <p>
    Price:·
    <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="string-length(substring-after(price, '.')) = 1">
            <input type="text" name="doc.0" size="5">
                <xsl:attribute name="value">
                    <xsl:value-of select="concat(price, '0')" />
                </xsl:attribute>
            </input>
            <xsl:text> / unit</xsl:text>
        </xsl:when>
        ...
<form>

The form action attribute contains the URL to which the form should be posted. The set price invocation must be delivered not to the <ACoffeeEditor> resource, but to the component <SetAPrice> resource. This invocation routing is done using the path request parameter. The path parameter specifies the path from the base resource to the target resource, in this case: 'updater/'.

Form controls

A textfield accepts the new price. The name attribute of the textfield identifies this input as the first argument in the invocation.

input type="text" name="doc.0" size="5" />
            

Each argument is identified by the doc.N string, where N is the position of the argument in the declared parameter list. For composite parameters, such as a <http://waterken.com/time/Time>, the parameter identifier prefixes the path to the component datatype. For example, if the first argument were a <Time>:

<input type="text" name="doc.0-hour" size="5" />
<input type="text" name="doc.0-minute" size="5" />
<input type="text" name="doc.0-second" size="5" />
            

Overriding content type negotiation for Mozilla

As is specified in the HTTP RFC, the Waterken^TM server uses the HTTP Accept request header to determine the content-type for the response. Mozilla specifies that it prefers text/xml over text/html. To override this preference, you should force the content-type to text/html by appending .html to the request URI.

You now know enough to start webizing your database! The next section concludes this tutorial.

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