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| <title>Overview of Apache Cocoon</title> |
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| <meta content="Tom Klaasen" name="DC.Creator"> |
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| <h1>What is Apache Cocoon</h1> |
| |
| <p>Cocoon is an XML publishing framework. It allows you to define XML |
| documents and transformations to be applied on it, to eventually generate a |
| presentation format of your choice (HTML, PDF, SVG, ...).</p> |
| |
| <p>Cocoon also gives you the possibility to apply logic to your XML files |
| (so that the XML pipeline can be dynamic).</p> |
| |
| |
| <p>The <a href="userdocs/index.html">User documentation</a> |
| and especially <a href="userdocs/concepts/index.html">Concepts</a> |
| will help to understand Cocoon. |
| </p> |
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| |
| <a name="samples"></a> |
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| <h1>Examples and demonstration applications</h1> |
| |
| <p> |
| There are a whole suite of sample applications to demonstrate the power |
| of Cocoon. These samples are available from the "welcome" page after |
| you have downloaded, built, and installed the distribution. |
| Each example portrays a different aspect of the vast capabilities of |
| Cocoon ... |
| <span class="codefrag">http://localhost:8080/cocoon/</span> |
| |
| </p> |
| |
| |
| <div class="note">With the 2.1 version, |
| <span class="codefrag">http://localhost:8080/cocoon/</span> goes directly to the |
| documentation, while |
| <span class="codefrag">http://localhost:8080/cocoon/samples/</span> is the Samples. |
| </div> |
| |
| |
| <p> |
| It will greatly assist your understanding of Cocoon to investigate |
| behind-the-scenes, to find out how each sample is processed. Do this |
| by looking at the actual XML documents provided in the distribution at |
| <span class="codefrag">src/webapp/samples/</span> and by consulting each sitemap to see |
| the processing steps that are defined. |
| </p> |
| |
| |
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| <h1>Overview of XML document processing</h1> |
| |
| <p>This section gives a general overview of how an XML document is |
| handled by Cocoon. See also the document |
| <a href="userdocs/concepts/index.html">Understanding Cocoon</a> for explanation of |
| the separation of content, style, logic and management functions. |
| </p> |
| |
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| <h2>Pipeline</h2> |
| <p>Cocoon relies on the pipeline model: an XML document is pushed |
| through a pipeline, that exists in several transformation steps of your |
| document. Every pipeline begins with a generator, continues with zero or more |
| transformers, and ends with a serializer. This can be compared to the |
| "servlet-chaining" concept of a servlet engine. We'll explain the components of |
| the pipeline now in more detail.</p> |
| <h3>Generator</h3> |
| <p>The Generator is the starting point for the pipeline. It is |
| responsible for delivering SAX events down the pipeline.</p> |
| <p>The simplest Generator is the FileGenerator: it takes a local XML |
| document, parses it, and sends the SAX events down the pipeline. </p> |
| <p>The Generator is constructed to be independent of the concept |
| "file". If you are able to generate SAX events from another source, you can use |
| that without having to go via a temporary file.</p> |
| <h3>Transformer</h3> |
| <p>A Transformer can be compared to an XSL: it gets an XML document |
| (or SAX events), and generates another XML document (or SAX events).</p> |
| <p>The simplest Transformer is the XalanTransformer: it applies an |
| XSL to the SAX events it receives.</p> |
| <h3>Serializer</h3> |
| <p>A Serializer is responsible for transforming SAX events to a |
| presentation format. For actors looking at the back of the pipeline, it looks |
| like a static file is delivered. So a browser can receive HTML, and will not be |
| able to tell the difference with a static file on the filesystem of the server. |
| </p> |
| <p>We have Serializers for generating HTML, XML, PDF, VRML, WAP, and |
| of course you can create your own.</p> |
| <p>The simplest Serializer is the XMLSerializer: it receives the SAX |
| events from up the pipeline, and returns a "human-readable" XML file.</p> |
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