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 <a name="what_is_anakia"></a><div class="section"><h2>What Is Anakia?</h2>
 <p>
     Essentially an XML transformation tool, Anakia uses <a href="http://www.jdom.org" class="externalLink">JDOM</a> and <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity" class="externalLink">Velocity</a> to transform
     XML documents into the format of your choice. It provides an alternative to
     using Ant's &lt;style&gt; task and
     <a href="http://xml.apache.org/xalan/" class="externalLink">XSL</a> to process XML
     files.
 </p>
 <p>
    The basic model that AnakiaTask uses is pretty straightforward :
 </p>
    <ol type="1">
    <li>Parse your XML into a JDOM Document:
 <div class="source"><pre>
 SAXBuilder builder;
 Document root = null;

 try
 {
     builder = new SAXBuilder(
         &quot;org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser&quot; );
     root = builder.build( file );
 }
 catch( Exception E )
 {
     System.out.println( ...  );
 }
 </pre></div>

 </li>

     <li>Stuff the Document (or root Element) into the context:<br></br>
 <div class="source"><pre>
 context.put(&quot;root&quot;, root );
 </pre></div>
 </li>

     <li>Render a template using Velocity. Within the template, one
         can use JDOM's methods to access the data contained in the
         XML document.</li>
 </ol>
 <p>
     Anakia is potentially easier to learn than XSL, but it maintains a
     similar level of functionality. Learning cryptic &lt;xsl:&gt; tags
     is unnecessary; you only need to know how to use the provided
     Context objects, JDOM, and Velocity's simple directives. Anakia
     seems to perform much faster than Xalan's XSL processor at creating
     pages. (23 pages are generated in 7-8 seconds on a PIII 500mhz
     running Win98 and JDK 1.3 with client Hotspot. A similar system
     using Ant's &lt;style&gt; task took 14-15 seconds -- nearly a 2x
     speed improvement.)
 </p>
 <p>
     Anakia -- intended to replace Stylebook, which was originally used
     to generate simple, static web sites in which all pages had the same
     look and feel -- is great for documentation/project web sites, such
     as the sites on <a href="http://www.apache.org/" class="externalLink">www.apache.org</a>
     and <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org" class="externalLink">jakarta.apache.org</a>. As it
     is more targeted to a specific purpose, it does not provide some of
     XSL's &quot;extra&quot; functionality.
 </p>
 <p>
     The example in the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory
     provides a good introduction to Anakia. You should find it quite
     simple to use.
 </p>
 <p>
     Anakia creates a Context, which contains a JDOM Document object of
     the .xml page, as well as an (optional) JDOM Document object of your
     project.xml page. In addition to the project.xml based context, additional
     xml contexts can be added through context nested elements. The
     .vsl page is executed (using Velocity) with the Context. You can then
     navigate your .xml file and pull information out of it by simply executing
     methods on the JDOM Document object.
 </p>
 <p>
     Anakia is being used to create the documentation for this
     website.  You can view the source for this website in the &quot;xdocs&quot; folder
     in the Velocity source distribution.
 </p>

 </div>

 <a name="installationexample"></a><div class="section"><h2>Installation/Example</h2>
 <p>
     Before reviewing the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory,
     you must <a href="../install.html">build Velocity</a>.
 </p>
 <p>
     After building Velocity, <code>cd</code> into the
     jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/build directory and run 'ant'.
 </p>
 <p>
     Output from running ant, in this case HTML files, is placed
     into the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/docs/ directory.
 </p>
 <p>
     The jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/xdocs/ directory has all of the
     .xml source code. The xdocs/stylesheets directory contains the .vsl
     file, in which most of the magic happens. Understanding <a href="user-guide.html">Velocity Template Language</a> and
     <a href="http://www.jdom.org/" class="externalLink">JDOM</a> is
     necessary to understand how the .vsl file works.
 </p>
 </div>

 <a name="how_does_it_work"></a><div class="section"><h2>How does it work?</h2>

 <p>
     Anakia is an Ant task that executes from an Ant build file. The
     build file looks something like this:
 </p>

 <div class="source"><pre>
     &lt;project name=&quot;build-site&quot; default=&quot;docs&quot; basedir=&quot;.&quot;&gt;
     &lt;property name=&quot;docs.src&quot; value=&quot;../xdocs&quot;/&gt;
     &lt;property name=&quot;docs.dest&quot; value=&quot;../docs&quot;/&gt;

     &lt;target name=&quot;prepare&quot;&gt;
         &lt;available classname=&quot;org.apache.velocity.anakia.AnakiaTask&quot;
         property=&quot;AnakiaTask.present&quot;/&gt;
     &lt;/target&gt;

     &lt;target depends=&quot;prepare&quot; name=&quot;prepare-error&quot;
                             unless=&quot;AnakiaTask.present&quot;&gt;
         &lt;echo&gt;
             AnakiaTask is not present! Please check to make sure that
             velocity.jar is in your classpath.
         &lt;/echo&gt;
     &lt;/target&gt;

     &lt;target name=&quot;docs&quot; depends=&quot;prepare-error&quot;
                         if=&quot;AnakiaTask.present&quot;&gt;
         &lt;taskdef name=&quot;anakia&quot;
                  classname=&quot;org.apache.velocity.anakia.AnakiaTask&quot;/&gt;
         &lt;anakia basedir=&quot;${docs.src}&quot; destdir=&quot;${docs.dest}/&quot;
              extension=&quot;.html&quot; style=&quot;./site.vsl&quot;
              projectFile=&quot;./stylesheets/project.xml&quot;
              excludes=&quot;**/stylesheets/**&quot;
              includes=&quot;**/*.xml&quot;
              lastModifiedCheck=&quot;false&quot;
              velocityPropertiesFile=&quot;velocity.properties&quot;&gt;
         &lt;/anakia&gt;

         &lt;copy todir=&quot;${docs.dest}/images&quot; filtering=&quot;no&quot;&gt;
             &lt;fileset dir=&quot;${docs.src}/images&quot;&gt;
                 &lt;include name=&quot;**/*.gif&quot;/&gt;
                 &lt;include name=&quot;**/*.jpeg&quot;/&gt;
                 &lt;include name=&quot;**/*.jpg&quot;/&gt;
             &lt;/fileset&gt;
         &lt;/copy&gt;
     &lt;/target&gt;
 &lt;/project&gt;
 </pre></div>

     <table class="bodyTable">
         <tr class="a">
             <th >Name</th>
             <th >Description</th>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >basedir</td>
             <td >Specifies the path to the directory location of your
             .xml files.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >destdir</td>
             <td >Specifies the path to the directory where the output
             files should go.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >extension</td>
             <td >
             This is the extension that is appended to the end of your
             .xml file. For example, with an extension of &quot;.html&quot;,
             index.xml would be converted into index.html. By default,
             the extension is .html.
             </td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >style</td>
             <td >This is the path (relative to Velocity's
             template.loader.1.template.path) to the
             VelocityStyleTemplate to process. This file is the
             equivalent to the .xsl file in Ant's style task. </td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >projectFile</td>
             <td >This is the path to a &quot;project&quot; file. This file is an
             XML file that can be used as a &quot;navigation&quot; file. If you
             have used Stylebook or Struts system for generation of the
             web site documentation, you will understand the purpose of
             this file. <strong>It is an optional task argument.</strong>
             If you look at the Anakia example in the
             jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory, you can see the
             project.xml file being used in the .vsl file. </td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >excludes</td>
             <td >This is the standard Ant excludes attribute. Specify any
             files or directories that you do not want Anakia to try to
             process.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >includes</td>
             <td >This is the standard Ant includes attribute. Specify any
             files or directories that you do want Anakia to try to
             process.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >lastModifiedCheck</td>
             <td >This turns on or off the ability to check the last
             modified date on files in order to determine whether or not
             they need to be re-rendered or not. The value of this
             attribute can be &quot;true, false, yes, no&quot;. By default, it is
             true, meaning that the last modified date should be checked
             and if the original .xml file, project file, or .vsl file
             have not changed, then don't process the page. This
             accelerates processing because pages that have not changed
             will not get reprocessed.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >templatePath</td>
             <td >This is the path to the templateRoot which is the
             directory where your site.vsl file is located. This can be
             defined in the Velocity.properties or it can be defined
             here. It it an optional argument if it is defined in the
             Velocity properties file already. However, if defined, this
             value will override the path defined in the
             Velocity.properties file.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >velocityPropertiesFile</td>
             <td >This is the path to the velocity.properties file. It is
             an optional argument and by default is set to find the
             properties file in the same directory that the JVM was
             started in.</td>
         </tr>
     </table>
 </div>

 <a name="predefined_context_objects"></a><div class="section"><h2>Predefined Context Objects</h2>
 <p>
     The Anakia Ant task places several objects into the Context for you.
 </p>
     <table class="bodyTable">
         <tr class="b">
         <th >Name</th>
         <th >Value</th>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >$root</td>
             <td >This contains the JDOM root Element to your .xml document. When
             this (or any other variable containing an element) are simply
             placed into template output, their XML form is rendered.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >$project</td>
             <td >This contains the JDOM root Element to your project.xml
             document. If you have not specified a project.xml document,
             then this variable will not be in the context. </td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >$escape.getText($string)</td>
             <td >This context object will convert HTML Entities in the
             $string that is passed into it and it will return the
             converted String. This is good for dealing with CDATA. The
             entities that are converted are: &quot; -&gt; &amp;quot; | &lt;
             -&gt; &amp;lt; | &gt; -&gt; &amp;gt; | &amp; - &gt; &amp;amp; </td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >..</td>
             <td >This contains a String which is the relative path to
             your .xml document from the baseDir that was specified in
             your Ant task attributes. Please see the examples/anakia
             .vsl document for example usage of this String.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >$xmlout</td>
             <td >This contains an class which extends the instance of the
             JDOM XMLOutputter() object. This allows you to easily create
             String output out of your JDOM element objects.
             $xmlout.outputString(Element). Again, please look at the
             examples for more information on how to use this
             object. NOTE: this object is obsoleted as simply specifying
             $element will output the XML serialized form of the element.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >$xmlout.outputString(Element, true)</td>
             <td >This contains an class which extends the instance of the
             JDOM XMLOutputter() object. The difference between this
             .outputString() and the one in XMLOutputter is that it will
             output all of the Elements <strong>within</strong> the
             passed in Element. So, if you pass in a &lt;td&gt; Element,
             you will get everything inside the &lt;td&gt; &lt;/td&gt;, but
             not the actual &lt;td&gt; &lt;/td&gt;. NOTE: this object is
             obsoleted as simply specifying $element.content will produce the
             desired output.
             </td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >$treeWalk.allElements($element)</td>
             <td >This will allow you to walk a tree of JDOM Element
             objects starting at $element. The point of this context
             object is to allow you to build an XSLT type system where
             you can look at each Element node conditionally and set its
             content and attribute values. This is probably one of the
             more &quot;ugly&quot; aspects of Anakia, but it does do the
             job and suggestions for improvement are appreciated. This
             context object is still under development and more
             documentation will follow soon. NOTE: this object is obsolete and
             is kept for backward compatibility only. You can use
             $element.selectNodes(&quot;//*&quot;) to achieve the same effect.</td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="b">
             <td >$xpath.applyTo(&quot;document/properties/@title&quot;, $root)</td>
             <td >
                The W3C XPath Specification <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/" class="externalLink">http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/
                </a> refers to NodeSets repeatedly, but this implementation
                simply uses java.util.List to hold all Nodes. A 'Node' is any
                object in a JDOM object tree, such as an org.jdom.Element,
                org.jdom.Document, or org.jdom.Attribute. Please see the .vsl
                example file and the org.apache.velocity.anakia.XPathTool javadoc
                for more information. NOTE: this object is obsolete and is kept
                for backward compatibility only. You can use
                $element.selectNodes(&quot;document/properties/@title&quot;) to achieve
                the same effect with a more intuitive syntax.
             </td>
         </tr>
         <tr class="a">
             <td >$date</td>
             <td >
                 This is a new java.util.Date object. Useful for putting
                 the current date/time into a page.
             </td>
         </tr>
     </table>
 <p>
     All node lists returned from Anakia objects through $element.selectNodes,
     $element.content, and $element.children, as well as through obsoleted
     $treeWalk.allElements and $xpath.applyTo have two special features:
     <ul>
         <li>they support the selectNodes method just as a single element does
         that applies an XPath expression to all nodes in the list, and</li>
         <li>when inserted into template output by simply specifying $list, they
         produce the XML fragment consisting of all nodes they contain. This
         eliminates much of the #foreach code in templates.</li>
     </ul>
 </p>

 </div>

 <a name="customizing_the_anakia_context"></a><div class="section"><h2>Customizing the Anakia Context</h2>
 <p>
     The Anakia context can be customized by using one or more context nested
     elements.
 </p>
 <div class="source"><pre>
 &lt;anakia ...&gt;
     &lt;context name=&quot;customContext&quot; file=&quot;./customContext.xml&quot;/&gt;
 &lt;/anakia&gt;
 </pre></div>
 <p>
     The context file must be an xml file and is an instance of a JDOM
     root element similar to $project. There are two attributes for the context:
 </p>
 <table class="bodyTable">
     <tr class="b">
         <th >Name</th>
         <th >Description</th>
     </tr>
     <tr class="a">
         <td >name</td>
         <td >
             This sets the name of the context within the velocity context.
             It cannot be one of the predefined context objects.
         </td>
     </tr>
     <tr class="b">
         <td >file</td>
         <td >
             The location of the custom file relative to the anakia basedir.
             This must be an XML file.
         </td>
     </tr>
 </table>
 <p>
     Within the velocity template the context can be accessed using the standard
     velocity template language.
 </p>
 <div class="source"><pre>
 #set ($customMenus = $xpath.applyTo(&quot;body/menu&quot;,$customContext))
 #foreach($customMenu in $customMenus)
   &lt;strong&gt;$customMenu.getAttributeValue(&quot;name&quot;)&lt;/strong&gt;
   &lt;ul&gt;
   #foreach ($customItem in $customMenu.getChildren() )
     #set ($name = $customItem.getAttributeValue(&quot;name&quot;))
     &lt;li&gt;#projectanchor($name $customItem.getAttributeValue(&quot;href&quot;))&lt;/li&gt;
   #end
   &lt;/ul&gt;
 #end</pre></div>
 </div>

 <a name="credits"></a><div class="section"><h2>Credits</h2>
 <p>
     Anakia was originally conceptualized and implemented by
         <a href="mailto:jon@latchkey.com">Jon S. Stevens</a>.
 </p>
 <p>
     The name <a href="http://www.kabalarians.com/female/anakia.htm" class="externalLink">Anakia</a> is a
     cool name that I think fits this project quite nicely. &quot;The name of
     Anakia has given you the desire for creative, artistic or musical
     expression in an original way. You strive to be different and have
     the self-confidence to implement your ideas because you have the
     perseverance necessary to see something through, despite obstacles.&quot;
 </p>
 <p>
     Further help and assistance was provided by Jason van Zyl and Geir
     Magnusson Jr. XPath support was added by Bob McWhirter. The more
     intuitive syntax achieved through selectNodes() and self-rendering
     elements and node lists was added by Attila Szegedi. The custom context
     nested element was added by Peter Ryan.
 </p>

 </div>


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       <div class="xright">&#169;
           2000-2007

           The Apache Software Foundation


              Last Published: 2007-01-28 17:40:22
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	<head>
	<title>Apache Velocity -
	Anakia</title>
	<style type="text/css" media="all">
	@import url("../css/maven-base.css");
	@import url("../css/maven-theme.css");
	@import url("../css/site.css");
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	<a name="what_is_anakia"></a><div class="section"><h2>What Is Anakia?</h2>
	<p>
	Essentially an XML transformation tool, Anakia uses <a href="http://www.jdom.org" class="externalLink">JDOM</a> and <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity" class="externalLink">Velocity</a> to transform
	XML documents into the format of your choice. It provides an alternative to
	using Ant's <style> task and
	<a href="http://xml.apache.org/xalan/" class="externalLink">XSL</a> to process XML
	files.
	</p>
	<p>
	The basic model that AnakiaTask uses is pretty straightforward :
	</p>
	<ol type="1">
	<li>Parse your XML into a JDOM Document:
	<div class="source"><pre>
	SAXBuilder builder;
	Document root = null;

	try
	{
	builder = new SAXBuilder(
	"org.apache.xerces.parsers.SAXParser" );
	root = builder.build( file );
	}
	catch( Exception E )
	{
	System.out.println( ... );
	}
	</pre></div>

	</li>

	<li>Stuff the Document (or root Element) into the context:<br></br>
	<div class="source"><pre>
	context.put("root", root );
	</pre></div>
	</li>

	<li>Render a template using Velocity. Within the template, one
	can use JDOM's methods to access the data contained in the
	XML document.</li>
	</ol>
	<p>
	Anakia is potentially easier to learn than XSL, but it maintains a
	similar level of functionality. Learning cryptic <xsl:> tags
	is unnecessary; you only need to know how to use the provided
	Context objects, JDOM, and Velocity's simple directives. Anakia
	seems to perform much faster than Xalan's XSL processor at creating
	pages. (23 pages are generated in 7-8 seconds on a PIII 500mhz
	running Win98 and JDK 1.3 with client Hotspot. A similar system
	using Ant's <style> task took 14-15 seconds -- nearly a 2x
	speed improvement.)
	</p>
	<p>
	Anakia -- intended to replace Stylebook, which was originally used
	to generate simple, static web sites in which all pages had the same
	look and feel -- is great for documentation/project web sites, such
	as the sites on <a href="http://www.apache.org/" class="externalLink">www.apache.org</a>
	and <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org" class="externalLink">jakarta.apache.org</a>. As it
	is more targeted to a specific purpose, it does not provide some of
	XSL's "extra" functionality.
	</p>
	<p>
	The example in the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory
	provides a good introduction to Anakia. You should find it quite
	simple to use.
	</p>
	<p>
	Anakia creates a Context, which contains a JDOM Document object of
	the .xml page, as well as an (optional) JDOM Document object of your
	project.xml page. In addition to the project.xml based context, additional
	xml contexts can be added through context nested elements. The
	.vsl page is executed (using Velocity) with the Context. You can then
	navigate your .xml file and pull information out of it by simply executing
	methods on the JDOM Document object.
	</p>
	<p>
	Anakia is being used to create the documentation for this
	website. You can view the source for this website in the "xdocs" folder
	in the Velocity source distribution.
	</p>

	</div>

	<a name="installationexample"></a><div class="section"><h2>Installation/Example</h2>
	<p>
	Before reviewing the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory,
	you must <a href="../install.html">build Velocity</a>.
	</p>
	<p>
	After building Velocity, <code>cd</code> into the
	jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/build directory and run 'ant'.
	</p>
	<p>
	Output from running ant, in this case HTML files, is placed
	into the jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/docs/ directory.
	</p>
	<p>
	The jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia/xdocs/ directory has all of the
	.xml source code. The xdocs/stylesheets directory contains the .vsl
	file, in which most of the magic happens. Understanding <a href="user-guide.html">Velocity Template Language</a> and
	<a href="http://www.jdom.org/" class="externalLink">JDOM</a> is
	necessary to understand how the .vsl file works.
	</p>
	</div>

	<a name="how_does_it_work"></a><div class="section"><h2>How does it work?</h2>

	<p>
	Anakia is an Ant task that executes from an Ant build file. The
	build file looks something like this:
	</p>

	<div class="source"><pre>
	<project name="build-site" default="docs" basedir=".">
	<property name="docs.src" value="../xdocs"/>
	<property name="docs.dest" value="../docs"/>

	<target name="prepare">
	<available classname="org.apache.velocity.anakia.AnakiaTask"
	property="AnakiaTask.present"/>
	</target>

	<target depends="prepare" name="prepare-error"
	unless="AnakiaTask.present">
	<echo>
	AnakiaTask is not present! Please check to make sure that
	velocity.jar is in your classpath.
	</echo>
	</target>

	<target name="docs" depends="prepare-error"
	if="AnakiaTask.present">
	<taskdef name="anakia"
	classname="org.apache.velocity.anakia.AnakiaTask"/>
	<anakia basedir="${docs.src}" destdir="${docs.dest}/"
	extension=".html" style="./site.vsl"
	projectFile="./stylesheets/project.xml"
	excludes="/stylesheets/"
	includes="*/.xml"
	lastModifiedCheck="false"
	velocityPropertiesFile="velocity.properties">
	</anakia>

	<copy todir="${docs.dest}/images" filtering="no">
	<fileset dir="${docs.src}/images">
	<include name="*/.gif"/>
	<include name="*/.jpeg"/>
	<include name="*/.jpg"/>
	</fileset>
	</copy>
	</target>
	</project>
	</pre></div>

	<table class="bodyTable">
	<tr class="a">
	<th >Name</th>
	<th >Description</th>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >basedir</td>
	<td >Specifies the path to the directory location of your
	.xml files.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >destdir</td>
	<td >Specifies the path to the directory where the output
	files should go.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >extension</td>
	<td >
	This is the extension that is appended to the end of your
	.xml file. For example, with an extension of ".html",
	index.xml would be converted into index.html. By default,
	the extension is .html.
	</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >style</td>
	<td >This is the path (relative to Velocity's
	template.loader.1.template.path) to the
	VelocityStyleTemplate to process. This file is the
	equivalent to the .xsl file in Ant's style task. </td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >projectFile</td>
	<td >This is the path to a "project" file. This file is an
	XML file that can be used as a "navigation" file. If you
	have used Stylebook or Struts system for generation of the
	web site documentation, you will understand the purpose of
	this file. <strong>It is an optional task argument.</strong>
	If you look at the Anakia example in the
	jakarta-velocity/examples/anakia directory, you can see the
	project.xml file being used in the .vsl file. </td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >excludes</td>
	<td >This is the standard Ant excludes attribute. Specify any
	files or directories that you do not want Anakia to try to
	process.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >includes</td>
	<td >This is the standard Ant includes attribute. Specify any
	files or directories that you do want Anakia to try to
	process.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >lastModifiedCheck</td>
	<td >This turns on or off the ability to check the last
	modified date on files in order to determine whether or not
	they need to be re-rendered or not. The value of this
	attribute can be "true, false, yes, no". By default, it is
	true, meaning that the last modified date should be checked
	and if the original .xml file, project file, or .vsl file
	have not changed, then don't process the page. This
	accelerates processing because pages that have not changed
	will not get reprocessed.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >templatePath</td>
	<td >This is the path to the templateRoot which is the
	directory where your site.vsl file is located. This can be
	defined in the Velocity.properties or it can be defined
	here. It it an optional argument if it is defined in the
	Velocity properties file already. However, if defined, this
	value will override the path defined in the
	Velocity.properties file.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >velocityPropertiesFile</td>
	<td >This is the path to the velocity.properties file. It is
	an optional argument and by default is set to find the
	properties file in the same directory that the JVM was
	started in.</td>
	</tr>
	</table>
	</div>

	<a name="predefined_context_objects"></a><div class="section"><h2>Predefined Context Objects</h2>
	<p>
	The Anakia Ant task places several objects into the Context for you.
	</p>
	<table class="bodyTable">
	<tr class="b">
	<th >Name</th>
	<th >Value</th>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >$root</td>
	<td >This contains the JDOM root Element to your .xml document. When
	this (or any other variable containing an element) are simply
	placed into template output, their XML form is rendered.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >$project</td>
	<td >This contains the JDOM root Element to your project.xml
	document. If you have not specified a project.xml document,
	then this variable will not be in the context. </td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >$escape.getText($string)</td>
	<td >This context object will convert HTML Entities in the
	$string that is passed into it and it will return the
	converted String. This is good for dealing with CDATA. The
	entities that are converted are: " -> &quot; \| <
	-> &lt; \| > -> &gt; \| & - > &amp; </td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >..</td>
	<td >This contains a String which is the relative path to
	your .xml document from the baseDir that was specified in
	your Ant task attributes. Please see the examples/anakia
	.vsl document for example usage of this String.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >$xmlout</td>
	<td >This contains an class which extends the instance of the
	JDOM XMLOutputter() object. This allows you to easily create
	String output out of your JDOM element objects.
	$xmlout.outputString(Element). Again, please look at the
	examples for more information on how to use this
	object. NOTE: this object is obsoleted as simply specifying
	$element will output the XML serialized form of the element.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >$xmlout.outputString(Element, true)</td>
	<td >This contains an class which extends the instance of the
	JDOM XMLOutputter() object. The difference between this
	.outputString() and the one in XMLOutputter is that it will
	output all of the Elements <strong>within</strong> the
	passed in Element. So, if you pass in a <td> Element,
	you will get everything inside the <td> </td>, but
	not the actual <td> </td>. NOTE: this object is
	obsoleted as simply specifying $element.content will produce the
	desired output.
	</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >$treeWalk.allElements($element)</td>
	<td >This will allow you to walk a tree of JDOM Element
	objects starting at $element. The point of this context
	object is to allow you to build an XSLT type system where
	you can look at each Element node conditionally and set its
	content and attribute values. This is probably one of the
	more "ugly" aspects of Anakia, but it does do the
	job and suggestions for improvement are appreciated. This
	context object is still under development and more
	documentation will follow soon. NOTE: this object is obsolete and
	is kept for backward compatibility only. You can use
	$element.selectNodes("//*") to achieve the same effect.</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >$xpath.applyTo("document/properties/@title", $root)</td>
	<td >
	The W3C XPath Specification <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/" class="externalLink">http://www.w3.org/TR/xpath/
	</a> refers to NodeSets repeatedly, but this implementation
	simply uses java.util.List to hold all Nodes. A 'Node' is any
	object in a JDOM object tree, such as an org.jdom.Element,
	org.jdom.Document, or org.jdom.Attribute. Please see the .vsl
	example file and the org.apache.velocity.anakia.XPathTool javadoc
	for more information. NOTE: this object is obsolete and is kept
	for backward compatibility only. You can use
	$element.selectNodes("document/properties/@title") to achieve
	the same effect with a more intuitive syntax.
	</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >$date</td>
	<td >
	This is a new java.util.Date object. Useful for putting
	the current date/time into a page.
	</td>
	</tr>
	</table>
	<p>
	All node lists returned from Anakia objects through $element.selectNodes,
	$element.content, and $element.children, as well as through obsoleted
	$treeWalk.allElements and $xpath.applyTo have two special features:
	<ul>
	<li>they support the selectNodes method just as a single element does
	that applies an XPath expression to all nodes in the list, and</li>
	<li>when inserted into template output by simply specifying $list, they
	produce the XML fragment consisting of all nodes they contain. This
	eliminates much of the #foreach code in templates.</li>
	</ul>
	</p>

	</div>

	<a name="customizing_the_anakia_context"></a><div class="section"><h2>Customizing the Anakia Context</h2>
	<p>
	The Anakia context can be customized by using one or more context nested
	elements.
	</p>
	<div class="source"><pre>
	<anakia ...>
	<context name="customContext" file="./customContext.xml"/>
	</anakia>
	</pre></div>
	<p>
	The context file must be an xml file and is an instance of a JDOM
	root element similar to $project. There are two attributes for the context:
	</p>
	<table class="bodyTable">
	<tr class="b">
	<th >Name</th>
	<th >Description</th>
	</tr>
	<tr class="a">
	<td >name</td>
	<td >
	This sets the name of the context within the velocity context.
	It cannot be one of the predefined context objects.
	</td>
	</tr>
	<tr class="b">
	<td >file</td>
	<td >
	The location of the custom file relative to the anakia basedir.
	This must be an XML file.
	</td>
	</tr>
	</table>
	<p>
	Within the velocity template the context can be accessed using the standard
	velocity template language.
	</p>
	<div class="source"><pre>
	#set ($customMenus = $xpath.applyTo("body/menu",$customContext))
	#foreach($customMenu in $customMenus)
	<strong>$customMenu.getAttributeValue("name")</strong>
	<ul>
	#foreach ($customItem in $customMenu.getChildren() )
	#set ($name = $customItem.getAttributeValue("name"))
	<li>#projectanchor($name $customItem.getAttributeValue("href"))</li>
	#end
	</ul>
	#end</pre></div>
	</div>

	<a name="credits"></a><div class="section"><h2>Credits</h2>
	<p>
	Anakia was originally conceptualized and implemented by
	<a href="mailto:jon@latchkey.com">Jon S. Stevens</a>.
	</p>
	<p>
	The name <a href="http://www.kabalarians.com/female/anakia.htm" class="externalLink">Anakia</a> is a
	cool name that I think fits this project quite nicely. "The name of
	Anakia has given you the desire for creative, artistic or musical
	expression in an original way. You strive to be different and have
	the self-confidence to implement your ideas because you have the
	perseverance necessary to see something through, despite obstacles."
	</p>
	<p>
	Further help and assistance was provided by Jason van Zyl and Geir
	Magnusson Jr. XPath support was added by Bob McWhirter. The more
	intuitive syntax achieved through selectNodes() and self-rendering
	elements and node lists was added by Attila Szegedi. The custom context
	nested element was added by Peter Ryan.
	</p>

	</div>



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	Last Published: 2007-01-28 17:40:22
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