DOMi / News: Recent posts

I recently began overhauling the DOMi object to slim down much of the
bulk and speed up the processing to make DOMi lighter and faster than
ever before. That overhaul is currently viewable through the
subversion repository in the /branches/retool folder. The changes are
almost done and will be released shortly, as soon as final review of
the code is done.

While DOMi 1.1 will retain a lot of the features of DOMi 1.0, some
features were cut out after it was decided that they did not fit the
scope of DOMi. The scope of DOMi is defined in the first comment of
the domi.class.php file, and is "a merger of DOMDocument, DOMXpath and
XSLTProcessor, with extended functionality for converting PHP data
types into an XML structure and convert the XML into the desired
output format." After reviewing much of the code and functionality of
DOMi, we decided to trim out features that go beyond that scope and go
into territory that could fall into the undesirable category of a God
object. We trimmed out the following features:... read more

I just put out DOMi 1.0.1 for download and did some cleanup on the subversion repository. I know it's been about 7 months since the last update, but this project is far from dead. There isn't a lot of updating going on, but there also isn't a lot of need for it. DOMi is a pretty simple concept and we've accomplished the vast majority of our goals.

The next major work that is in queue is doing a ton of cleanup and efficiency retooling. DOMi has grown a bit unkempt and needs some housecleaning, but other than that, there isn't much that needs to really be done, although we are always open to suggestions.... read more

The DOMi website is now inside the DOMi subversion repository. There are some examples of using DOMi inside the website, so feel free to checkout that folder:

http://domi.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/domi/website

Had a problem with DOMi that I fixed:

When working on Septuro I ran into a problem.

The problem happened when I created a navigation object that I was converting to xml using domi:

In an array, if a parent key [nav-item] has children arrays with number as the keys[1], when converting to xml those number keys get converted to the parent name and the parent gets -list appended to the end of its name[nav-item-list]. But if one of those children has multiple keys and one of those keys has the same name as its parent because the parent was changed from numbers to [nav-item] that key get changed to [nav-item-list] when it does not need to be.... read more

DOMi is no longer using CVS as the source control of choice. As of today, the CVS repository will be going offline and all future work will be done on the Subversion repository.

The development team behind DOMi has begun a new project, also available on SourceForge, called Septuro. This new project is a full PHP framework built around the DOMi core.

Septuro has a high focus on abstraction, encapsulation and polymorphism, as well as an emphasis on using XML and the XSLTProcessor.

We encourage any PHP developer looking for a powerful, modern framework to check out Septuro. At the moment, it is in very early development, but the current build is fully usable.... read more

During a recent project, we came into a need to have our XML tree converted into a valid JSON document for an AJAX form validation script. One of the project admins, Phillip Brown, wrote an XSL stylesheet that would convert the XML to JSON, and I've now integrated a copy of this stylesheet right into DOMi. As of now, this new feature is only available in the DOMi 1.1 alpha files, available in the repository on the HEAD branch, but this will soon be released as part of the next stable release. To display JSON, use the DOMi::RENDER_JSON rendering mode. Between RENDER_XML, RENDER_VIEW and now RENDER_JSON, DOMi is shaping up to be a powerful tool for use with AJAX. The development team uses jQuery along with DOMi to accomplish a lot of innovative things in AJAX.... read more

DOMi 1.0 is finally released. DOMi has been pretty solid for a few months now, but the final pieces are in place and DOMi is officially out of beta and ready for full production usage. DOMi is a PHP object that is designed around XSL driven websites. DOMi combines the existing classes DOMDocument, DOMXpath and XSLTProcessor into one unified shell. In addition to this, DOMi introduces a powerful set of functions that are easy to use and allow a user to attach large, complex PHP data structures to the DOMDocument with a single command, and render the XSLTProcessor output in another command. Simply put - if it involves PHP and XSL, DOMi makes it incredibly easy.

The initial version of DOMi's documentation is now complete. It's ugly, the colors are bold and it's a bit intense, but it is now available for use. The documentation, like everything else on the DOMi page, is purely powered by DOMi, XML and the XSLTProcessor. I will soon be putting up a link to download the source code for the page, to be used as an example of how to operate DOMi.

--Steve Phillips (visual777)

DOMi 0.4.0 enhances the capabilities of DOMi was well as simplifies the minimum syntax needed for using DOMi.

AttachToXml can now convert PHP objects to XML and attach to the DOMDocument.

Render and GenerateXsl have been simplified to reduce the process of importing a stylesheet and converting the XML / XSL to HTML down to a single method call.

Nodes can be stripped out in a very select fashion, allowing a developer to remove confidential information from an XML tree prior to rendering.

The primary website for the DOMi project, http://domi.sourceforge.net, has gone live. This page describes DOMi in detail, and gives an indepth example of how to use DOMi in a PHP website that uses XSL driven rendering.

Future plans for the site include full documentation and more interconnectivity with the resources of sourceforge.net.

DOMailer is a specialized PHP mailing object built around the powerful DOMi object.

DOMailer makes use of DOMi's AttachToXml capabilities to convert complex PHP objects into an XML document. This XML tree is then converted into HTML via an XSL stylesheet automatically when the email is sent out.

The initial release of DOMi is now available for download on sourceforge.net. This is an improved DOM object for PHP that is particularly designed for XSL driven websites.

The DOMi object is built as a seamless merger of DOMDocument, DOMXpath and XSLTProcessor and works on any server running PHP5 with the php-xsl module installed. DOMi provides transparent access to those three objects, along with additional tools to power XSL driven sites.... read more