SablotronPlugin

Apply a stylesheet to XML using the Sablotron tool

Introduction

The SablotronPlugin uses CPAN:XML::Sablotron to transform an XSL stylesheet and XML data file into HTML. Both the XSL stylesheet and XML document are Wiki Topics.

Syntax Rules

Place the directive %XSLTRANSFORM{xsl="SablotronXsl",xml=...}% at the top of the XML document where SablotronXsl is the name of the stylesheet and ... is the xml codes.

Examples

Plugin Settings

Plugin settings are stored as preferences variables. To reference a plugin setting write %<plugin>_<setting>%, i.e. %NEWPLUGIN_SHORTDESCRIPTION%

• One line description, is shown in the TextFormattingRules topic:
  • Set SHORTDESCRIPTION = Apply a stylesheet to XML using the Sablotron tool

• Debug plugin: (See output in data/debug.txt)
  • Set DEBUG = 0

Plugin Installation Instructions

Note: You do not need to install anything on the browser to use this plugin. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the plugin on the TWiki server.

• Install the dependencies (see below)
• Download the ZIP file from the Plugin Home (see below)
• Unzip SablotronPlugin.zip in your twiki installation directory. Content:

  File:	Description:
  data/TWiki/SablotronPlugin.txt	Plugin topic
  data/TWiki/SablotronXsl.txt	Sample stylesheet
  data/TWiki/SablotronXml.txt	Sample XML document
  lib/TWiki/Plugins/SablotronPlugin.pm	Plugin Perl module

• Run the configure script to enable the plugin in the {Plugins} section.
• Check SablotronXml if SablotronPlugin shows up in the list of activated plugins: SpreadSheetPlugin, BackupRestorePlugin, BlackListPlugin, ChartPlugin, ColorPickerPlugin, CommentPlugin, EditTablePlugin, GaugePlugin, GeoLookupPlugin, HeadlinesPlugin, InterwikiPlugin, JQueryPlugin, LocalCityTimePlugin, PreferencesPlugin, QRCodePlugin, RecentVisitorPlugin, RenderListPlugin, SetGetPlugin, ShareMePlugin, SlideShowPlugin, SmiliesPlugin, TWikiDrawPlugin, TWikiOrgPlugin, TablePlugin, TagMePlugin, TinyMCEPlugin, TwistyPlugin, VarCachePlugin, WysiwygPlugin

Design History

• Thanks to TWiki:Main.MartinCleaver for the TWiki:Plugins.XmlXslPlugin. My browser apparently does not have the feature needed to do client-side transformations so I make use of XML::Sablotron to perform the transformation on the server.
• I wanted to be able to see the transformation take place during the Preview Changes of an XML document. This way any extraneous characters or parsing problems will show up as an error.

Issues Outstanding

• Double quotes are used in the xml code so cannot follow proper form for TWiki::Func::extractNameValuePair
• In most cases of error in the XML the result is an "Internal Server Error" - viewing the web server error log tells you the line number to fix. I really should handle this in the plugin.

Plugin Info

Related Topics: SablotronXml, SablotronXsl, TWikiPlugins, DeveloperDocumentationCategory, AdminDocumentationCategory, TWikiPreferences