S3XRC | S3XML | Transformation

S3XML On-the-fly Transformation

At a glance

S3XRC can perform XSLT transformation of XML/JSON sources on-the-fly upon data export and import.

The XSLT stylesheets to use for this transformation can be either (fallback cascade in this order):

• a static file on the server or a web URL
• a file attached to the request (at import)
• an integrated stylesheet of Eden (folder static/xslt)

Note that formats *.xml and *.json will not be attempted to transform.

Integrated Stylesheets

These will be automatically used if no other stylesheet is specified (fallback). The integrated stylesheets reside in:

• static/xslt/export for export transformation (S3XML into other format)
• static/xslt/import for import transformation (other format into S3XML)

The name of the respective stylesheet must be <extension>.xsl, where <extension> is the file extension of the respective format, e.g.:

• pfif.xsl transforms from/to *.pfif from *.xml

XSLT Stylesheets on the Server

You can use the URL variable ?transform= to specify a transformation stylesheet at a file location on the server, e.g.:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/vita/pr/person.pfif?transform=/use/share/stylesheets/export.pfif

...to use the stylesheet from /use/share/stylesheets/export.pfif for this export.

Note:

• the web server must be permitted to access this location
• you must not specify "xml" or "json" as data format of the resource, otherwise this will suppress any transformation attempt
• this currently assumes that the data format is an XML format and not JSON (subject to change in the near future)

XSLT Stylesheets on the Web

You can use the URL variable ?transform= to specify a transformation stylesheet at a web URL, e.g.:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/vita/pr/person.pfif?transform=http://vita.sahanafoundation.org/eden/static/xslt/export/pfif.xsl

...to use the stylesheet at http://vita.sahanafoundation.org/eden/static/xslt/export/pfif.xsl for this export.

Note:

• you must not specify "xml" or "json" as data format of the resource, because that will suppress any transformation attempt
• this currently assumes that the data format is an XML format and not JSON (subject to change in the near future).

This feature is especially useful to create custom feeds to integrate into remote sites, e.g. RSS:

• create your own rss.xsl to transform S3XML into RSS
• place it on a public (e.g. your own) web server, say http://www.mysite.org/eden-access/rss.xsl
• provide a link to Eden resources using your RSS stylesheet:
  • http://edensite.org/eden/hms/hospital.rss?transform=http://www.mysite.org/eden-access/rss.xsl

Of course this does work with other formats as well, e.g. KML (if you want to provide a map rather than a feed link) etc

Attached XSLT Stylesheets

For data import, an XSLT stylesheet to transform foreign XML into S3XML can be attached to the request.

The filename of the attached stylesheet is expected to be <resourcename>.xsl, where <resourcename> is the name of the target resource (without application prefix, e.g. person or hospital).

Note:

• document(), xsl:include and xsl:import will need absolute paths in this case (safer to avoid these)

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