Apache AxKit

In 2002 I got to attend the O'Reilly open-source convention in San Diego California. Was a great event, and following are some notes I made after one of the tutorial sessions on AxKit

The AxKit tutorial (session) has just wrapped up. Were about 40 people there I guess, pretty much a united nations, french, german, eastern-euro's, Japanese, Canadians and Yanks of course.

The presentation was by AxKit's author Matt Seargent.. http://www.axkit.org/

He spoke well/clearly and people seemed pretty interested, there was a range of tech-levels in the audience, everything from a pretty basic level through to full-on dudes like Christian Glahn, author of XML-LibXML...

http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=XML-LibXML

Matt spoke a lot about how to configure Apache to setup the processors and handlers that are used in a typical AxKit install, all looks pretty straight-fwd.

In a nutshell, your content sits in XML files, those files can include inline logic (perl-ish) or can make calls to librarys of code (called taglibs). That inline/external code generally outputs plain-text or XML and the whole XML shebang is then filtered through whatever XSL stylesheet you have configured in the apache config for the URL requested.

you can also chain a sequence of XSL files (pipeline) so that for example you might output pure XML from your content at the 1st stage, then filter it through another for presentation for different devices or markup languages (or PDF).

one issue with external/multiple files for logic is that coz this is running under mod_perl, youre gonna get weirdness from old instances of previous compiled scripts unless you restart apache each time. However Matt mentioned a module Apache::Reload which prevents some of that cacheing activity which you would use on a devel box, then remove when the application went live (so that cacheing resumes) http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Apache-Reload

He mentioned that you can use Sablotron (or any other XSL processor) at that final stage, but that he reccommends LibXML (see above)

Because of the number of changes likely when friggin around with directives, its likely you would want to use .htaccess files rather that HTTPD.CONF

You can also configure AxKit to allow pass-thru when you have a file or folder where you actually do want to pass XML back to the user without any transformation at all

There's a BOF on tonight on axKit which I might attend as I'm hoping the discussion will enter the Cocoon-vs-AxKit area. As far as I can see, AxKit is kinda a Cocoon-lite, and theyre both apache.org projects so they will have to sort out their own space over time.

We have hard-copies of the slideshow but code examples should appear here shortly.. http://axkit.org/docs/presentations/index.xml

thats all for now. time for lunch, DeeKnow

PS - the internet access room here is kitted out with these damned Macs, having many keyboard 'challenges' ;-)

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