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DocFlex/XML v1.0 - docs/reports generator from XML files

URL: FILIGRIS WORKS

At 3:36 AM on Mar 28, 2005, Leonid Rudy wrote:

FILIGRIS WORKS presents a new software development tool - DocFlex/XML v1.0 - a template-driven documentation/report generator by the data obtained from XML files.

• Overview
• Key Features
• Technical Requirements
• Screenshots
• Links

Overview

DocFlex/XML is the most advanced application of DocFlex Technology developed on top of the experience accumulated from the previous two: DocFlex/Javadoc and DocFlex/Together .

This tool allows you to visually design the automatic generation of professional quality reports and documentation by the data obtained from your XML files.

The output documents can be generated in RTF and HTML formats. The HTML can be both single-file and multi-framed documentation. The TXT (plain text) output is supported as well, which enables you to use this tool also for various XML file transformations.

Such a generation works by interpreting special templates , which are created using a graphic Template Designer . The templates functionally behave similar to full-blown scripting-language programs (such as XSLT scripts). However, the advantage of the approach offered by DocFlex Technology is that it requires very few coding of anything manually and allows to design your templates in the WYSIWYG form.

The templates are designed basing on the information obtained from DTD or XSD (XML Schema) files mostly by using mouse and specifying properties in Template Designer dialogs. The data type information (i.e. XML elements and attributes) appears in various treeviews which are used to program the data processing in the templates.

The formatting of the generated documents is programmed by specifying formatting properties of template components (some of which can be changed simply by dragging mouse in the designer pane). Many of such properties are graphically visualized by the Template Designer.

The output generator can be both launched from the command line and invoked directly from the Template Designer's main menu which allows you to immediately see the result produced by your templates yet during designing them.

Key Features

• The high quality graphic Template Designer
• The templates are designed basing on the data type information obtained from DTD or XSD (SML Schema) files.
• Data processing
  • The ability to generate reports/documentation by the data obtained from XML files.
  • A single report may contain data from multiple XML files with different structure.
  • Full support for XML namespaces.
  • Sophisticated capabilities for data querying and sorting based on an extension of XPath.
  • The ability to traverse XML documents with a network structure (using IDREF/IDREFS attributes)
• Inserting images
  • statically specified in templates
  • dynamically, obtained from directly XML documents (base64- or hex-encoded) or from arbitrary files, URLs or Java resources
  • supported image formats: GIF, PNG, JPG, WMF
• Creating hyperlinks
  • a common network of hyperlinks for the whole generated documentation
  • possibility to download several frame windows from a single hyperlink at once
• Output formats
  • HTML (both plain and multi-framed)
  • RTF
  • TXT (plain text)
  • XSL-FO (planned for version 2)
• Universal support for various formatting techniques
  • text formatting: fonts, colors, borders
  • paragraph formatting: margins, pagination control, borders, colors
  • border formatting: styles (solid, double, dashed, dotted), thickness, colors
  • tables: arbitrary cell layouts, borders, nested tables
  • lists: bulleted, numbered
  • document fields (RTF): page number, number of pages, TOC, etc.
  • page formatting: size, orientation, margins, headers/footers
  • formatting styles
  • rendering of embedded HTML, which means interpreting in non-HTML output formats (such as RTF) the HTML tags embedded in text data (e.g. documentation comments). Almost all HTML tags practically usable in doc-comments are supported.
• Project development
  • The ability to call templates from one another.
  • The elaborated support of template parameters.
  • Both features allow you to reuse the same templates for different tasks as well as organize template libraries, which may help you to shorten the project development time and simplify its further updates and maintenance.
  • The open DocFlex API allows to launch the DocFlex generator directly from your Java code, pass template parameters as well as to extend your templates with custom written Java classes.
  • The freeware template interpreter and output generator (together with the run-time Java library) available for free use and redistribution both separately and as part of your applications.

Technical Requirements

DocFlex/XML (version 1.0) requires Java ^TM 2 Version 1.4.x installed on your system.

To parse XML files, DTDs and XML Schemas, DocFlex/XML uses Apache Xerces2 Java Parser version 2.6.2.

Freeware Edition

The freeware edition, which is called “DocFlex/XML Generator” , includes only the template interpreter (output generator) without the Template Designer.

Currently, it also includes a set of "XML Documentor" templates (see Sample 1 ), which allow you to compiles any number of your XML files of any possible types into a nice looking printable (RTF) or framed (HTML) documentation. The templates are embedded as resources into the Java library file. So you can immediately start using it as an utility for documenting your raw XML files.

In the same way, we are planning eventually to enrich the freeware edition with some other sets of "heavyweight" templates dedicated to various big XML applications. The next are coming (1) "XML Schema Documentor" templates and (2) XMI templates, which together with DocFlex/XML itself effectively will provide a template-driven doc-generator for virtually any UML modeling tool.

Basically, the freeware edition is intended for the following purposes:

• As a freeware documentation generator for several standard XML applications (using built-in templates).
• As a command line interpreter for your custom templates (however, only those created with the licensed full version).
• As a Java library, which will allow you to call processing of your custom templates directly from your Java code.

Screenshots

This screenshot shows the "XML Documentor" template loaded in the Template Designer with the generator dialog invoked and running the generation by this template (click to see in full size):

This are the pages of an RTF document produced with the "XML Documentor" template:

And this RTF has been generated by a quite different template called "Sales Report" :

Click here to see a screenshot of this template. Find out more about how it works by the following link: http://www.filigris.com/products/docflex_xml/samples/sample2.php .

Links

To find out a lot more about DocFlex/XML, please visit:
http://www.filigris.com/products/docflex_xml/

Try DocFlex/XML now:
http://www.filigris.com/downloads/