Cocoon documentation

Current:

• Wiki: http://wiki.apache.org/cocoon/FrontPage (question about docs. Answer: Understand How ASF works)
• Official v2 site: http://cocoon.apache.org/
• Jira bug tracking: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/COCOON (issue about docs - there are several more issues regarding out-of-date contribution procedures)
• Cocoon 3 alpha: http://people.apache.org/~reinhard/c3-ref/html/
• List of mailing lists: http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/cocoon/site/site/mail-lists.html (also a browsable SVN repository of the documentation website - will updating this fix the live site?)
• Main site mailing lists: http://cocoon.apache.org/2.1/1175.html
• Searchable mailing list archives: http://markmail.org/search/?q=list%3Aorg.apache.cocoon.users
• and http://markmail.org/search/?q=list%3Aorg.apache.cocoon.dev

Dead or out-of-date:

• org.apache.cocoon.docs - is this dead?
• This link to Cocoon Bugzilla is dead (it should be Jira now anyway): http://cocoon.apache.org/2.0/howto/howto-bugzilla.html
• Many of the links on this menu are dead: http://cocoon.apache.org/2.0/
• The "View, Edit or comment" link at the bottom of this page is dead: http://cocoon.apache.org/

Criticism:

• Struts vs. Cocoon: Why Cocoon lost the battle.
• The Death of XSLT in Web Frameworks

oXygen Eclipse plugin

oXygen XML/XSLT: http://www.oxygenxml.com/download_oxygenxml_editor.html#Eclipse

• it's not all that, but step-through-debugging does work
• have to manually set the file association defaults to Oxygen types
• unreadable default colour scheme for Oxygen filetypes. It is difficult to import syntax-highlighting preferences in Eclipse. You're better off setting them yourself.
• to use step-through debugging, you need to:
• 'Configure Transformation Scenario' (under XML/XSL menu - it appears when you open an XML or XSL file)
• open the 'Debug Scenario' perspective in the XML/XSL menu
• setting the input parameters for debugging is fiddly
• the XML file being used as input must be "part of the project"

Cocoon XSLT errors

java.lang.NullPointerException

This could mean you've used the wrong attribute name in a tag, e.g.
<xsl:attribute type="type">
instead of
<xsl:attribute name="type">

There seems to be no syntax checking to warn in cases like this.

Using Java classes from XSLT under Coocon / JBoss

Possible MD5 methods:
<xsl:value-of select="md5:encode('$term')" xmlns:md5="java:org.jboss.security.Base64Encoder" />
<xsl:value-of select="md5:encodeString($term,'ISO-8859-1')" xmlns:md5="java:org.hsqldb.lib.MD5" />

Search through built-in classes in JBoss:
find /path/to/jboss-4.2.2.GA/server/default/ -name "*.jar" -exec jar tf {} \; | grep MD5 -H

JSP/XSP generator in Cocoon

Warning: Untested.

In the sitemap.xmap:

<map:match pattern="^(\d+)$" type="regexp">
<map:generate type="serverpages" src="sfapi.xsp">
<map:parameter name="feedid" value="{1}"/>
</map:generate>

The source of sfapi.xsp

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsp:page language="java" xmlns:xsp="http://apache.org/xsp" xmlns:soap="http://apache.org/xsp/soap/3.0">
<results>
<xsp:logic>
int feedid=0;
try {
feedid = Integer.parseInt(parameters.getParameter("feedid"));
} catch (Exception e) {
feedid = -999;
}
</xsp:logic>

<soapcall
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema-instance"
xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/1999/XMLSchema"
url="/FeedManager"
>

<m:getFeedData xmlns:m="http://else.something.co.uk/ns/feeds">
<int_1 xsi:type="xsd:int"><xsp:expr>feedid</xsp:expr></int_1>
</m:getFeedData>

</soapcall>

</results>
</xsp:page>

Pass a parameter to XSL in Cocoon

In the sitemap:

<map:transform src="xslt/page.xsl">
    <map:parameter name="param1" value="{1}"/>
</map:transform>

In the XSL:

<xsl:param name="param1"/>

...

<xsl:template match="whatever">
  <xsl:attribute name="something">
     <xsl:value-of select="$param1"/>
  </xsl:attribute>
</xsl:template>