xml-dev - Re: Transmitting CGI vars to an XML doc.

[Binesh Bannerjee <binesh@hex21.com>]

On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Binesh Bannerjee wrote:

> 	What is the way that people here are using to send CGI parameters
> to an XML driven CGI?


Sorry for the endless clarifications, but I just ... Well, want to clarify.
The way I'm thinking about approaching this is as follows:
	CGI request comes into Servlet.
	Servlet creates a "CGI_Descriptor" XML doc.
	Servlet passes CGI XML doc, Template XML doc, Template XSL doc
		to "Processor"
	Processor reads Template XML doc (via DOM) replaces CGI vars
		[ This is the part that's unclear to me. ]
	Processor spawns new processors to handle "Subtemplates" within
		template (which follows recursively this same procedure.)
	Processor uses XSL to create the output page, and sends
		this off to the browser.

My unknowns are, how to represent in the Template XML doc CGI variables,
	and how people are handling XML in "subtemplates" that themselves
	may need to be processed further...
Am I correct in thinking that adding say a "<date/> tag that is to expand into
todays date would necessarily be a proprietary piece of code, that no standard
XML browser would ever be able to read? (Although, a date one is far too
simple, since that would likely be done with the ECMAscript in XSL...)

It would be nice to be able to do
	<?binesh_plugin param="<cgi var="Blah"/>"?>
and then binesh_plugin would add whatever it needed to into the
doc...

If not, it's looking like I'll have to do something like so:
	<binesh_plugin>
		<cgi var="whatever"/>
		<cgi var="something"/>
	</binesh_plugin>

Which then I'd write something using the DOM, that traverses the doc
and looks for binesh_plugin, and replaces that node with whatever
it thinks should be there instead... But I'd _hate_ to have to do this
because anything I do with DOM would be opaque to a general XML style
browsers...

Again any help appreciated, thanks...

(BTW, total Unix guy and microsoft-phobe here... So...)

Binesh


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