AxKit/App/TABOO version 0.5 =========================== INTRODUCTION AxKit::App::TABOO is a object oriented approach to creating a publishing system on the top of AxKit, the XML Application Server. The two O's thus stands for Object Oriented, AB for AxKit-Based. I don't know what the T stands for yet, suggestions are welcome! It is a fundamental design choice with TABOO that all data is to be abstracted to objects. I noticed while looking at other people's code, that though it was a lot of interesting code, it would be rather hard to integrate all the interesting parts into a coherent whole. Furthermore, everybody has their own way of storing data, and scattered files or different databases didn't seem right to me. With TABOO, everything that interacts with AxKit just interacts with the Data objects. That means, if you don't want to store things in the PostgreSQL database my Data objects use, you could always subclass it, rewrite the classes or whatever. You would mostly just have to rewrite the load method. It is also the Data object's job to create XML of its own data. The intention is to write Data objects for every kind of thing you might want to do. From the start, there will be Slashdot-type stories of varying length, with comments. These are ever-changing in the sense that people can come in an add comments at any time. The other thing we start out with is more static and longer articles. It is the intention, however, that TABOO should be a framework where one can add a Wiki, a webshop (which is a work now in progress, some code was in earlier distros but has been removed now), etc. The AxKit::App::TABOO::User class will then be reused and probably subclassed with e.g. a Customer class (now being done), but the datasource will be the same. TABOO makes extensive use of Providers. That is mostly because I like the abstraction and direct control of URIs that Providers provide. It makes it easy to create a framework where URIs are sensible and should be easy to maintain for foreseeable future. Also, there is no markup in the code, that's also rather important to make it maintainable. For the stuff that goes into the database, OTOH, XSP is used, and several taglibs are used. J. Shirley has now provided some more cascading stylesheets, and they have been extended by the main developer, so there is a style for pretty much everything now. 0.1 was the first beta release. It is pretty much a useable framework for posting news-stories. It consists mainly of News and NewsList providers that constructs objects, instruct them to load their data based on the URI, get them to write their own XML, and pass this to some XSLT stylesheets, which makes some presentable XHTML. There are also several XSP taglibs, and quite a lot of XSP pages and XSL Transformations are now included in the distribution. There is also some user-management code, including authentication and authorization, to allow adding new users and editing the information of existing users. TABOO can run on different virtual hosts and operate on different databases. It uses TinyMCE http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/ to allow WYSIWYG entered text in textfields. This results in an incompatible change to older versions, and the data needs to be converted. A script is included, look inside to see how to use it. I'm following the mantra "release early", and have made everything I've done available from the start. Several fine folks have poked at it, and I love that, feel free to poke some more! INSTALLATION To install this module use CPAN or CPANPLUS tools or type the following: perl Makefile.PL make make test make install There are various things that should be done to the get the rest running, such as copying over the htdocs and creating the database, see inline docs for details. DEPENDENCIES You will need at least Perl 5.7.3 to use TABOO. This is due to Unicode-issues that is not well supported in earlier releases. This module requires these other modules and libraries: - AxKit, of course! - DBI - DBD::Pg. You need at least 1.32. Earlier versions has problems with SQL3 Arrays, but it may be possible to get away with it. - Encode, 2.09 is needed. - Time::Piece - Class::Data::Inheritable - AxKit::XSP::QueryParam - Text::Unaccent and IDNA::Punycode is used to ensure proper names. - Session for the object oriented approach to Apache Sessions - Crypt::GeneratePassword for generating passwords to send to users. - AxKit::XSP::Sendmail to send e-mail to new users. - MIME::Types. - Apache::AxKit::Plugin::AddXSLParams::Request for virtual hosts, but it is easy to remove this dependency if one wishes. - Apache::AxKit::Plugin::Param::Expr. - Data::Dumper lists out debugging information, but can be removed. - AxKit will bring along XML::LibXML, and while you could use any LibXSLT module supported by AxKit, I recommend XML::LibXSLT, and to ease installation, I made it a prerequisite. - Net::Akismet may be used, but is not strictly required. See http://akismet.com/ - You'd most certainly want a few Formatters, the Apache::AxKit::Provider::File::Formatter and the OpenOffice Provider, but they are not set as prerequisites. You will need TinyMCE, http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/ which should be unpacked and Aliased so that the jscripts directory is just after the root. You will also need some XML libraries, for example libxml2 and libxslt. You will probably have gotten these along with AxKit. TABOO should be able to use any AxKit uses, with the exception that it makes use of some self-defined EXSLT, so you'll need a library that supports that. Additionally, you may experience that the installation hangs on wanting DB_File. I believe this is a bug in some other package, but I haven't nailed it down yet. Just install DB_File and you'll be fine. SUBVERSION REPOSITORY TABOO is currently maintained in a Subversion repository. The trunk can be checked out anonymously using e.g.: svn checkout http://svn.kjernsmo.net/TABOO/trunk TABOO It is also available using svn+ssh for committers. SUPPORT There is a list taboo-dev@kjernsmo.net you can subscribe to at http://lists.kjernsmo.net/mailman/listinfo/taboo-dev Beware that TABOO is in development, so it is not yet software that you just install and use. For those who likes the design goals, and likes to continue development along these lines, I think they will find it so usable it is worth an install. COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE Copyright (c) 2003-2006 Kjetil Kjernsmo. This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.