Presenting XML

This is the home page of Presenting XML.

The core Presenting XML mark-up language is currently being further developed in a companion project, Serving XML. Anyone interested primarily in the command line examples should use the Serving XML software instead.

Presenting XML is a Java web application framework for presenting HTML, PDF, WML etc. in a device independent manner. It aims to achieve a complete separation of content and presentation. It supports various kinds of content including XML files, dynamic content, SQL result sets and flat files. It provides a declarative way for applying filters and XSLT transforms to a stream of XML content in a pipeline. It allows user defined filters and serializers written as Java plug-ins. It is component based and extendible.

Presenting XML may be used as a command line tool or as a framework for a servlet-based web application. Simple examples with XML, XSLT, and Java are included in the distribution. There are command line examples for converting flat files to XML (and vice versa), for converting SQL results to XML, for applying a sequence of XSLT transforms and SAX filters in a pipeline, and for setting up streaming filters.

There is a sample web application that illustrates how to build a simple shopping cart.

The last Presenting XML file distribution may be downloaded from SourceForge. It includes Java source code and ant build files as well as binary jar files, a sample web application, and run scripts. It includes api documentation and a user guide. It also includes a number of third party jar files including Saxon (also Xalan), Apache Xerces, Sun's Multi-Schema XML Validator, and the Apache fop pdf driver. It includes everything for running the sample web application except the Java JDK and a web server.

Presenting XML requires Java JDK 1.3 or later (it will not work with earlier versions.) It also requires a web server. The examples are configured to work with Jakarta Tomcat 4.0, which may be downloaded and installed separately. The WML sample pages require a WAP browser. A free WAP browser emulator may be obtained from OPENWAVE.

Detailed installation instructions may be found in the "Getting Started" section of the User Guide, in the doc/guide subdirectory (or in the on-line guide.)

Feedback of any sort - suggestions, requests or contributions - would be greatly appreciated. The project administrator of this software may be contacted at danielaparker@users.sourceforge.net.