Java Dynamic HTML

HTML

HyperText Markup Language is the predominant markup language for web pages. HTML elements are the basic building-blocks of webpages....

 is a web framework that uses XML

XML

Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

 actions embedded in HTML pages to dynamically create a web page.

The framework was developed by Rio Software and Technologies Ltd as an inhouse development. As the product matured and stabilised the company decided to release a version that was free to use and distribute.

The introduction of XML actions into static HTML pages seemed to be a natural fit, HTML being almost XML compliant. Further to this, technology to combine multiple XML schema

XML schema

An XML schema is a description of a type of XML document, typically expressed in terms of constraints on the structure and content of documents of that type, above and beyond the basic syntactical constraints imposed by XML itself...

s that can validate both HTML and XML already existed. Add these features with tools such as Eclipse

Eclipse (software)

Eclipse is a multi-language software development environment comprising an integrated development environment and an extensible plug-in system...

 or Netbeans

NetBeans

NetBeans refers to both a platform framework for Java desktop applications, and an integrated development environment for developing with Java, JavaScript, PHP, Python, Groovy, C, C++, Scala, Clojure, and others...

 and we have a platform that validates the page content and provides type ahead tips from the schema definitions.

Architecture

The framework uses a single servlet that services all pages that use embedded XML actions. When a page is serviced, all XML actions on the page are invoked. The content created by each XML action is inserted into the page in place of the XML action.

Both the Spring Framework and Apache Commons libraries are utilised by JDHTML. These provide a reliable and standard set of configuration and utility tools that are familiar to most Java

Java (programming language)

Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...

developers.

XML Actions

The core XML actions are

• Page Inserts - Imports other pages such as templates, shared presentation pages, menus...
• If-Else Logic - Build display logic into pages by using powerful if, elseif and else expressions.
• Put - Store content into http sessions that is available to all following actions for the life of the session.
• Code - Make direct calls into java code and libraries.
• Echo - Echo imported content, variables, data, expressions and more into the page.
• Transform - Transform XML using a StyleSheet and present the results on the page.
• Page Edit - Edit your web pages from a browser.
• File Upload - Upload files from your laptop, pc, notebook to the server

Variables

Session variables are managed directly from the HTML pages using put, get and expressions.

Language

Localise text content by using language property files and key language data references in the HTML pages.

Configuration

JDHTML comes with a minimum configuration that is extendable by adding configuration items where you need them.

Spring Framework

Configure system static variables, pre-build configurable objects, data resources and more using Spring. Spring is pre-configured during deployment, and is up and running once the system starts, making all Spring configured beans available to all XML actions.

Introduction

An introduction and tutorial is available from the Introduction website.