Topic: Dynamic 'Navaigation' of XML data

Hi,

Im quite new to XML-XSL, any any tips or pointers would be great.

Im trying to build a web based 'Resume Builder' for myself, so that when Mr.Agency man comes a knocking, I dont have to fiddle around with my resume endlessly to get the job, and as I mainly do offsite contracting, this happens quite a lot. The broader plan in to make an interface that is intuitive enough so that Mr.Agency can build my resume himself, to pass onto his client.

*breath*

I have done a neat little schema and XML data file, and have no problems adding to that, or displaying selected bits and pieces statically, but the part that is causing my hair to fall out most rapidly, is trying to select and display the data onto the page, one fragment at a time, without reloading the page, with the ability to remove it from the page too.

I might be a little *confusled* but, I dont want to use javascript, because then each time I add a new element to the XML file, I will need to add the JS to do the visible/invisible bit, and the goal is really to make this open ended.

I thought maybe I could embed some JS into the schema, but I cant find anything about doing this.


Cheers,
Henry

The only way you can change the content on the webpage without reloading is to use JavaScript. The other option would be using some server-side language, but with that you would have to reload the page each time you changed something.

I don't think there is anything similiar to JavaScript that you can embed into the XML file, since XML is only for storing information. You might be able to accomplish something like you want using XSLT, but since browser support for XSLT is still sketchy you would need some server-side language to parse it and you would be back where you started.

quote:

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I might be a little *confusled* but, I dont want to use javascript, because then each time I add a new element to the XML file, I will need to add the JS to do the visible/invisible bit, and the goal is really to make this open ended.

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Not really sure what you mean with the visible/invisible bit here... The way I would add new elements to the XML sheet was to have a form with all the needed fields and use php to parse it into the tree. To change the form so it displays the right input fields etc you can use JavaScript.

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"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
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If the output of your XSL transformation is an HTML page, then you can use JavaScript, and especially the XmlHttpRequest object ( which AFAIK is supported in IE6, FF, MZ, Op 7.60, Safari 1.2 ) to load some fragments of XML.

Thanks for your replies,

I have recovered from my *confusled* state, it might make you laugh to think that I was talking about changing the style with the visible/invisible JS... Doh!

ok, so ive been looking at doing it using XSLT, but the problem of needing to manually incorporate the JS into each new element still (i think) remians.

I cant for the life of me find an exaple of what I want todo, which I thought would be relatively common place esp on corporate forms, where a selection dicates that other selections need to be avalible to the user, and hence a new 'fragment' needs to be loaded into place, the only way i have seen this done is with the page reloading. If that wernt an issue then I would happily do it with JSP. But as the user would be making many selections, and customising by adding and removing quite a lot of fields, it would be far too time consuming to reload at each step.

Well, I did think up one solution, although Im a little hesitant, I could do it in actionscript in flash, but there are the obvious annoyances doing it like that...

it might be back to the drawing board for me, but not without a fight

One solution is always to load all information to begin with and the hide the parts that aren't needed using JavaScript. You can then easily redisplay them with JavaScript without the page having to reload. But if you end up with a lot of unnessecary information loaded each time, this might not be such a good idea...

_________________________
"There are 10 kinds of people; those who know binary, those who don't and those who start counting at zero"
- the Golden Ratio - Vim Tutorial -