I have a large mod_perl application which uses perl modules for the application and object processing and relies on HTML::Mason for content delivery and templating. Needless to say I am starting to hit Mason's scalability limits and am considering replacing Mason with Axkit and porting all the templates. From what I have learned so far I will need to use either XSLT or XPath for the templating and delivery needs.
AxKit isn't really complicated, it's just that there's a lot of stuff (same goes for XML). I'd say step one is to get a feel for every option from 30.000 feet and then to figure out what you need to get started and which options sound saner to you (knowing that you can look into other options later). To be perfectly honest, it is very difficult if not impossible to tell someone else how they should be using AxKit, it really is TIMTOWDI :)
Reading the Wiki (http://axkit.org/wiki/view/AxKit/DefaultPage) if you haven't already is absolutely vital.
There are several ways to generate content (XSP, Providers) and several ways of transforming content for display (XSLT, XPathScript) with varying degrees of dynamicity.
Coming from a Mason background, you may feel more at home with XPathScript. However, it may be that the similarities it bears with Mason's templating system are precisely what you want to get away from.
Can anyone here who has undergone such a migration offer some advice?
I migrated in a brute-force manner (ie rewrote a lot), quite a long time ago now. I can basically split my former Mason content in two parts: the bits where the code was mostly separated into another module with the page only calling the API, and the bits where the pages had way too much code in them.
For the former the switch is easier. You can wrap the same modules into an XSP taglib (using TaglibHelper or SimpleTaglib) in order to generate an XML structure corresponding to your data, and style that with XSLT.
For the latter it is less fun, you may have to refactor quite a bit. What I did was to keep Mason running and port segments of the sites one by one, time allowing. Note that Mason can be used as an input to AxKit (using the filter provider) so that you could modify the HTML in your Mason pages to be XML, and filter that through AxKit to style it with the XSLT that styles your pure-AxKit stuff.
xml schema definitions
*bzzzzzt* It's very likely that you will never need those :) Doing without them will make your life a *lot* easier.
PS: If you don't mind telling us about the "scalability limits" you've found in Mason that are inciting you to switch to AxKit, I'm sure people on the list would be glad to hear about that.
-- Robin Berjon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Research Engineer, Expway http://expway.fr/ 7FC0 6F5F D864 EFB8 08CE 8E74 58E6 D5DB 4889 2488
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