lightweight XSLT-based page flow: anyone thought of this?

S

SUPER KOOL 223

Java Page Flows are coming out as a means to organize web apps and I
don't really like it much. You've got all this low-level visual stuff
that doesn't scale, and then you've got low-level controller
directives embedded in comments throughout your source. Doesn't help
me much. Too granular.

Has anyone else thought of using XSLT for top-level declarative page
flow in a web app?

Start simple, like this:

HTTPRequest -> 2XML -> Pageflow.xsl -> literal-or-forward -> browser

If it gets more complicated, then you've got:

HTTPRequest -> process upload -> 2XML -> process input ->
-> Pageflow.xsl -> literal-or-forward -> browser

pageflow.xsl lives in the top level directory of the web app, let's
you know all the events and everything going on in a web app. This is
nice if you have to maintain the web app, and if it was written by
someone else.

Note a lot of HTML snippets can be embedded in the stylesheets,
"thank yous" and whatnot, as well as references to JSPs to forward
to, "forwarding descriptors" that get processed by the last "literal
or forward" phase.

You could easily scan the pageflow file(s) for lists and summaries in
ways you could not with the Java Page Flows being proposed.

Performance issues are the processor's problem.

Regards.
 

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