lekkimworld.comxml

On plug-ins, features, update sites and extension.xml files...

Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:25:48 GMT

I'm receiving quite a few e-mails asking questions about features, plug-ins, update sites and extension.xml files and how they relate so I thought I would try and clarify things.

Term	Description
Plug-in	The smallest unit of code you use to create functionality for an Eclipse based client. This is where the actual Java code is.
Feature	Used to package and bundle plug-ins together. Features are thin wrappers for plug-ins and is basically a single file called feature.xml. You can bundle multiple plug-ins into a single feature. When installing code into Notes you actually install the features which in turn point to the plug-ins to copy to the client. You can only manage features through the Notes "code UI" (File/Application/Application Management) though you can install code into the platform by simply copying the plug-ins into the appropriate directories in the file system. This is not recommended... :-)
Update site	Update sites are used to deploy features to clients. An update site is simply a directory containing a "plugins"-directory containing a jar-file per plug-in "features"-directory containing jar-file per feature site.xml file describing which features and plug-ins (and in what versions) are available on that particular update site When an Eclipse based client contacts an update site it reads and parses the site.xml file to discover what's available there. Update Sites may be remote or local. A local update site is a directory on a local hard drive or LAN drive with the above structure or a zip-file with the above structure. An update site may also be remote and may be read using HTTP (any server will do) or it may be read using NRPC if you're using a Notes 8+ client. When using NRPC you use the Update Site Notes database template.
extension.xml	These files are used when installing code using the MyWidgets sidebar plug-in and is a shorthand for manually installing code. There is no magic at work here. When you drop an extension.xml file onto the sidebar panel the following steps are performed: The extension.xml file is parsed and verified to be a valid XML file The features to be installed are located and a dependency graph is assembled so any required features are identified The update site address specified in the extension.xml file is contacted and each missing feature in the dependency grapg is attempted installed "bottom up" The client is restarted

Tool of the day: XPather

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 12:56:00 GMT

Simple, powerful and easy to use XPath extension for Firefox to easily work with XPath statements: XPather.

E4X

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 07:55:00 GMT

Mostly for the E4X stuff - gotta check it out in more detail at some point.

developerWorks: Create an Ajax mindreader application with E4X and Prototype, Part 1: Build the Twenty Questions infrastructure

Building XPath expression from XML node

Tue, 19 Jun 2007 06:27:36 GMT

Ever do parsing of large XML/DXL documents? Does the parsing ever fail? If it does you know you need some way to log the offending element in a compact and standardized way. For situations like this (and numerous others) XPath is the way to go and with code like I'll show in this post you are good to go. Java code ahead!

Free on-line XPath tool

Sat, 16 Jun 2007 14:20:01 GMT

If you occasionally need to do a XPath query against a XML document and don't want to shell out the money for a professional tool to cover that need you should take a look at the BIT-101 XPath Query Tool.

XML entities when doing XSL transformations using LotusScript

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 08:35:33 GMT

I stumbled over an interesting post on developerWorks on external XML entities and XSL transformations in LotusScript: XSLT transform-ignoring external entity reference in R7.0.2 - but worked well on R6.5.4. I was puzzled by the post and looked a bit into it and was unable to find any real LotusScript API support for working with XML entities when processing XML in LotusScript.

I find it funny that there doesn't appear to be any real API support for XML entities in LotusScript that I can see anyway. Hmmm - gotta go into Sherlock Holmes mode...

Charts

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 07:02:52 GMT

This kind of XML/SWF charts is cool and exactly the kind of stuff I have been looking for, for at project I'm currently working on. Via Tim Tripcony.

Using the right version of MSXML in Internet Explorer

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 07:18:50 GMT

I have previously written about the Microsoft XML parser (MSXML) and have had quite a lot of fustrations with it and was pleasantly surprised to find a post on the Microsoft XML Team's WebLog on the subject. The post is called "Using the right version of MSXML in Internet Explorer" and provide details on the different versions of MSXML and which version to use where. The post even has an executive summary section which I recommend you skim though I'll reproduce the most important 4 bullets for MSXML here:

Use MSXML 6.0 - it is "in the box" on Vista and available for download on Win2k, XP, and 2003. It has the best security, performance, reliability, and W3C conformance
MSXML 3.0 is our preferred "fallback" - It is installed on every OS from a fully patched Win2k SP4 installation on up, so it requires �zero-deployment� and is serviced regularly with the OS
MSXML 4.0 was released to the web about 5 years ago, but at this point has been superseded by MSXML 6.0 and is only intended to support legacy applications
MSXML 5.0 for Microsoft Office Applications is purpose-built for Office applications and isn�t intended for broad deployment. Internet Explorer 7 actually has the MSXML5 components "off-by-default" in the Internet zone so your customers will get a goldbar for each MSXML5 control on a page if your code tries to instantiate it. The best recommendation is to avoid MSXML5 in your web apps (only machines with Office 2003 or higher will have it, anyway.).

Skim it now or save the bookmark for when you need to deal with MSXML.