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Dear collegues,
I was wondering if there is anybody on this list who could share some experience (opinions are very welcome too) on using XML/XSLT (2.0) as the templating technology for very large news/information web sites, vs using a more common Java/JSP,/Velocity or Freemarker solution.
As a background information, and to better contextualize this request, we have already implemented a prototype, and it's beautifully working in production).
In this implementation, contents are available as XML documents, in the form of external feeds(Atom, RSS, PRISM etc) and RESTful web services that access a JCR/JSR-170 repository.
Templates are basically XHTML documents, augmented with XML markups that allow to navigate the content XML (using an XPATH style addressing of the content XML elements) and to present specific elements as well. A library of XSLT (2..0) rules is used to process the templates, to access the XML using the document function and finally to create the resulting XHTML documents.
The transformation happens in pipelined stages, so that it's really easy to render the XML in intermediate formats, and do the final presentation(s) at the last stage. I forgot to mention that the output can be targeted at different devices (such as pdas, cellphones, desktop browsers etc) or media (RSS etc).
I have been strenuously advocating this approach, because I see in it a a lot of potential:
1. templates are XML documents, therefore they can be processed (meta- templates) still using XSLT
2. the XSLT implementation of the tag has easy access to the template document and to the content document, so that it can, for instance, provide a different presentation if inside a <h1> or inside a <title> or a <div id="body">
3. it's really easy to author and validate these documents using basically any tool (including dreamweaver, eclipse, XML tools etc).
4. new presentation rules can be created without altering the existing code (using import precedence and/or more specific matchers)
5. The XSLT itself can be processed and validated still using XSLT (meta-processing)
6. XLST 2.0 provides a much better set of tools for generic processing, modularity, data control and makes it a feasible task for average programmers to maintain this code
So, I have been advocating this choice, implemented the prototype, and still, I face a huge resistance based on the "fame" of XSLT of being:
1. Too slow (i proved it wrong already, but still, just yesterday somebody was telling about Freemarker being 15 times faster than XSLT at rendering docbook, and I know that Robert Koberg has something to say about that... :)
2. Too difficult because programmers only know imperative programming, understand only imperative programming, and are willing to learn only imperative programming
3. Too unknown ("everybody knows JSP...")
4. Too old ("XSLT is dead, or at least I heard so")
5. Nobody uses it for this purpose (really? pre-cooked HTML from XSLT is so unheard of?)
6. Too hard to maintain ("it becomes very messy very soon")
7. Too hard to read ("XML is not meant for programming..., #if () is so much more readable")
So the alternative is Velocity, Freemarker or JSP and an XML/Java binding solution (such as JAXP), and this alternative is considered more scalable, more robust and more flexible. In other words, the push is for templates made of:
<%=article.headline %> (or <# or <@ depending on the poison that you choose) .
I apologize for this long email, and I realize that this may not be the appropriate forum for such an inquiry (please list-owner feel free to censor it if it's the case), but at this point I really need (after months of useless advocacy on my side) some opinions and experience and real world examples, if anybody has one to contribute.
[xsl] XML/XSLT for web templating
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Subject: [xsl] XML/XSLT for web templating From: Alessandro Bologna <alessandro.bologna@xxxxxxxxx> Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2007 10:11:30 -0400 |
Dear collegues,
I was wondering if there is anybody on this list who could share some experience (opinions are very welcome too) on using XML/XSLT (2.0) as the templating technology for very large news/information web sites, vs using a more common Java/JSP,/Velocity or Freemarker solution.
As a background information, and to better contextualize this request, we have already implemented a prototype, and it's beautifully working in production).
In this implementation, contents are available as XML documents, in the form of external feeds(Atom, RSS, PRISM etc) and RESTful web services that access a JCR/JSR-170 repository.
Templates are basically XHTML documents, augmented with XML markups that allow to navigate the content XML (using an XPATH style addressing of the content XML elements) and to present specific elements as well. A library of XSLT (2..0) rules is used to process the templates, to access the XML using the document function and finally to create the resulting XHTML documents.
A minimalistic template may look like this: <x:template name="article" target="browser"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xmlns:x="http://foo.com/x"> <head> <title x:node="article/tout/headline"/> </head> <body> <x:header/> <h1 x:node="article/headline"/> <div id="body"> <x:render x:node="article/body"/> </div> <x:footer/> </body> </html> </x:template>
The transformation happens in pipelined stages, so that it's really easy to render the XML in intermediate formats, and do the final presentation(s) at the last stage. I forgot to mention that the output can be targeted at different devices (such as pdas, cellphones, desktop browsers etc) or media (RSS etc).
I have been strenuously advocating this approach, because I see in it a a lot of potential:
1. templates are XML documents, therefore they can be processed (meta- templates) still using XSLT
2. the XSLT implementation of the tag has easy access to the template document and to the content document, so that it can, for instance, provide a different presentation if inside a <h1> or inside a <title> or a <div id="body">
3. it's really easy to author and validate these documents using basically any tool (including dreamweaver, eclipse, XML tools etc).
4. new presentation rules can be created without altering the existing code (using import precedence and/or more specific matchers)
5. The XSLT itself can be processed and validated still using XSLT (meta-processing)
6. XLST 2.0 provides a much better set of tools for generic processing, modularity, data control and makes it a feasible task for average programmers to maintain this code
So, I have been advocating this choice, implemented the prototype, and still, I face a huge resistance based on the "fame" of XSLT of being:
1. Too slow (i proved it wrong already, but still, just yesterday somebody was telling about Freemarker being 15 times faster than XSLT at rendering docbook, and I know that Robert Koberg has something to say about that... :)
2. Too difficult because programmers only know imperative programming, understand only imperative programming, and are willing to learn only imperative programming
3. Too unknown ("everybody knows JSP...")
4. Too old ("XSLT is dead, or at least I heard so")
5. Nobody uses it for this purpose (really? pre-cooked HTML from XSLT is so unheard of?)
6. Too hard to maintain ("it becomes very messy very soon")
7. Too hard to read ("XML is not meant for programming..., #if () is so much more readable")
So the alternative is Velocity, Freemarker or JSP and an XML/Java binding solution (such as JAXP), and this alternative is considered more scalable, more robust and more flexible. In other words, the push is for templates made of:
<%=article.headline %> (or <# or <@ depending on the poison that you choose) .
I apologize for this long email, and I realize that this may not be the appropriate forum for such an inquiry (please list-owner feel free to censor it if it's the case), but at this point I really need (after months of useless advocacy on my side) some opinions and experience and real world examples, if anybody has one to contribute.
Best regards Alessandro Bologna
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