Hi...
I've just joined the mailing list, so I apologize if I'm either posting to
the wrong place, or in the wrong way, etc.
I have _alot_ of servlet/jsp/taglib code I've written and been experimenting
with for about the past year. I'm hoping to roll into an existing project.
Basically, I have developed an API which allows for total segregation of a
view from a controller. The API is currently very simple and powerful, and
best used as a tag, but was initially developed to run in a servlet
framework which I'm currently reworking (I made it _way_ too complicated the
first time). It has many applications besides just doing html for a
browser, such as providing a neutral form for data to be wrapped in, which
can then be delivered to views returning text/plain, html, xml, wml, etc.
While I understand that tag libs are an implementation of the mvc design
pattern and conceptually very similar to this, I have found them in their
current state to be less than they could be, so I have wrapped my API in a
tag and xml namespace to fill the things I feel are gaps. It eliminates the
need for coding any java in a jsp, but still gives the advantages of rapid
development which make jsp a good thing. Also it is (IMHO) a siginificant
workflow improvement over the way tag libs seem to work (at least at my
company, although I'm happy to admit that the tag lib implementation here
kinda sucks). What I've ended up with is a component based xml, xslt system
I call "buffered xslt". It allows for the advantages of using xslt at
runtime, but buffers the document produced in the transformation, greatly
improving performance and server load. Basically, docs produced from a
transformation are parsed and internally use any of the 5 tags defined in my
namespace which control how values are rendered. So, really the output from
an xslt becomes a 'component template'. I guess it sounds confusing, but I
have a fair amount of documentation, and it's actually quite easy to use.
8) Controllers can be shared between servlets and tags, and it is true
componentized development. I think there are alot of good concepts in this
work, and I'm hoping to have something good come of it. It's been my pet
passion for the past 12 months... So, I guess I'm wondering if anyone out
there is interested, and if anyone can give me a heads up on how I can
submit the work to the Apache foundation for someone to look at. 8) I
suppose if I had to summarize it easily it would be a mix of the xslt tag,
the input tag, and perhaps struts. I'm just hoping someone will give it a
go, because I know it's quite cool (not that I'm biased or anything).....
8)
Thanks for your time,
Joe Maisel
