View

The view is a set of XSLT files, that take results from business logic calls as well as static XML files as input and create the resulting HTML pages. XSLT can be extended with user-defined XPath functions.

Directory structure

All web related files are stored under /opt/DOMAIN/web.

Under this directory there are three subdirectories:

flow contains the XML configuration files for the controller
xml contains the XML files with static localized strings
xsl contains the XSLT files

Transformation

XSLT file is processed taking XML as input to generate HTML pages. The structure of the XML is

<data>
  <global> Global session variables </global>
  <local> Local session variables </local>
  <output> Result of the last SOAP call to application logic </output>
  <ANY> Contents of the XML file with static localized strings </ANY>
</data>

XML files

The document element of static XML files can have any name, except for the reserved names global, local and output. It will appear with the given name under data. XML files can include other XML files by means of DTD ENTITY tags. Example:

<xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE static [
  <!ENTITY top SYSTEM "top.xml">
]>
<static>
  <htmltitle>example.com - About</htmltitle>
  <title>About this forum</title>
  &top;
</static>

URL structure

The URL is composed like this:

METHOD://HOSTNAME/CGI/PROGRAM

METHOD is either http or https
HOSTNAME is the host name the web application is running on
CGI is either cgi for standard CGI or fcgi for Fast-CGI
PROGRAM selects the controller script to execute

Global session variables

Global session variables are available to all PROGRAMs.

cgibase the URL up to but not including PROGRAM
httpbase the URL up to but not including CGI
httpsbase the secure URL up to but not including CGI
imgbase the URL to the images
language the session language
scgibase the secure URL up to but not including PROGRAM
ssl flag that tells if this session runs over secured HTTP or not (true | false), i.e. if METHOD is http or https
userid (must be set by login) user id of authenticated user
username (must be set by login) user name of authenticated user

Also included are the following virtual variables (they do not exist in the session, instead they are set for every request.

program the program name
path_extra the part of the URL between PROGRAM and ?, the start of the arguments

Local session variables

Local session variables are PROGRAM-specific and are all form fields posted or submitted in a call to the PROGRAM. Local session variables live until they are explicitly cleared by means of a call to the session daemon. This allows for easy creation of forms that remember input values, and for processes that gather user input over multiple pages.

CGI

cgi and fcgi read the configuration file /opt/DOMAIN/etc/cgi.env or fcgi.env respectively, containing the following variables:

ALLOWED_LANGUAGES comma-separated list of allowed languages
KEEP_SSL flag (true|false) : once switched to https stay on https
DISABLE_SSL flag (true|false) : disable https, always stay on http
IMAGE_BASE image base url
SESSION_TIMEOUT timeout of a web session in seconds
USER_LIBRARIES colon-separated list of libraries containing user-defined xpath functions

sessiond

sessiond manages user's web sessions.

Daemon Configuration

sessiond uses the configuration file /opt/DOMAIN/etc/sessiond.env.

View Documentation