Hi Daniel,
I am playing around with the new blocks protocol and the BlockServlets.
I have two blocks A and B, B "inherits" from A and then there is a
webapp that uses both blocks. The webapp has the DispatcherServlet
configured in the web.xml and the mountPath for the two blocks is
defined in the spring-bean config XML file. Now I face two problems:
1) I'd like to configure the mountPath to the blocks in the webapp,
because the blocks itself are generic; I have tried it with a properties
file manually placed in WEB-INF/cocoon/properties that sets the mountPath:
com.domain.package.blockA.mountPath=foo
But this does not work. How can I override the setting in the bean
config XML with a property?
2) The nice development feature of sitemap reloading does not work when
working on blocks, because you cannot deploy a block with it's own
web.xml (that has the necessary DispatcherServlet). I use the webapp
which will use the packaged jars from A and B.
The hurdles here are:
a) the cocoon deployer will overwrite the web.xml with no
DispatcherServlet configured
b) the blockContextURL should point to the source-folder (like in the
sitemap generated by the deployer) so that reloading works on the
developer's working directory
c) that blockContextURL must be overwritten by the deployer via a
property (problem like in 1)
I'd imagine a deployer that recognizes the -Dorg.apache.cocoon.mode=dev
and then configures the webapp to work as above. I could do some work on
the deployer plugin if those points are resolved.
Another question then arises for the final wiring of blocks: typically I
have a root sitemap and mount my different sub-sitemaps there. But when
each sub-sitemap is now served via a BlockServlet I must have the
DispatcherServlet listening on "/" so that I need a separate
BlockServlet serving the root (like /index.html). It would be very cool
if one could mount a BlockServlet directly inside the root sitemap.
Alex
--
Alexander Klimetschek
http://www.mindquarry.com
