AxKit/App/TABOO version 0.074
=============================

INTRODUCTION

AxKit::App::TABOO is a object oriented approach to creating a
publishing system on the top of AxKit, the XML Application Server. 
The two O's thus stands for Object Oriented, AB for AxKit-Based. 
I don't know what the T stands for yet, suggestions are welcome! 

It is a fundamental design choice with TABOO that all data is to be
abstracted to objects. I noticed while looking at other people's code,
that though it was a lot of interesting code, it would be rather hard
to integrate all the interesting parts into a coherent whole.
Furthermore, everybody has their own way of storing data, and
scattered files or different databases didn't seem right to me.

With TABOO, everything that interacts with AxKit just interacts with
the Data objects. That means, if you don't want to store things in the
PostgreSQL database my Data objects use, you could always subclass it,
rewrite the classes or whatever. You would mostly just have to rewrite
the load method. It is also the Data object's job to create XML of its
own data.

The intention is to write Data objects for every kind of thing you
might want to do. From the start, there will be Slashdot-type stories
of varying length, with comments. These are ever-changing in the sense
that people can come in an add comments at any time. The other thing
we start out with is more static and longer articles.

It is the intention, however, that TABOO should be a framework where
one can add a Wiki, a webshop (which is a work now in progress, and
present in the distro but alas in an unusable form), etc. The
AxKit::App::TABOO::User class will then be reused and probably
subclassed with e.g. a Customer class (now being done), but the
datasource will be the same.

TABOO makes extensive use of Providers. That is mostly because I like
the abstraction and direct control of URIs that Providers provide. It
makes it easy to create a framework where URIs are sensible and should
be easy to maintain for foreseeable future. Also, there is no markup
in the code, that's also rather important to make it maintainable.

For the stuff that goes into the database, OTOH, XSP is used, and
several taglibs are used.

This is a early release, an alpha in that it does some useful
things. It consists mainly of News and NewsList providers that
constructs objects, instruct them to load their data based on the URI,
get them to write their own XML, and pass this to some XSLT
stylesheets, which makes some presentable XHTML. There are also
several XSP taglibs, and some some XSP pages and XSL Transformations
are now included in the distribution. There is also some
user-management code, including authentication and authorization, to
allow adding new users and editing the information of existing
users. These are very much work-in-progress, and I don't feel I have
quite gotten the hang of XSLT yet, but it is being worked on. Try them
out if you understand what they're supposed to do.

The webshop has a lot of Data objects, but had a fixed deadline that
whooshed by so it has now been put on hold. But it is actually not
very far from ready to manage a simple webshop.

Plural objects is a conceptual step up which has recently been
introduced to allow manipulation of more than one Data object. 
The whole "Comments" code need a review to conform with the new
ideas. Thus, there are some code in the present release that used to
work that is somewhat flaky. And it is only second on the TODO list...

TABOO can now also list News stories with the NewsList Provider. 

But then, the mantra is "release early", isn't it? And besides, Real
Soon Now this should have evolved into something I can put on a
website and have random people come by and use, a beta of some
sort... I'll be thrilled if other hackers are willing to poke at TABOO
allready at this point!

INSTALLATION

To install this module use CPAN or CPANPLUS tools or type the following:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install

DEPENDENCIES

This module requires these other modules and libraries:
- AxKit, of course!
- DBI
- DBD::Pg. You need at least 1.32. Earlier versions has problems with 
  SQL3 Arrays, but it may be possible to get away with it.  
- Time::Piece
- Class::Data::Inheritable
- AxKit::XSP::QueryParam
- AxKit::XSP::BasicSession, you should have 0.18 or later.
- Crypt::GeneratePassword for generating passwords to send to users.
- AxKit::XSP::Sendmail to send e-mail to new users.
- Data::Dumper lists out debugging information, but can be removed. 


SUPPORT

There is a list taboo-dev@kjernsmo.net, you can subscribe to at 
http://lists.kjernsmo.net/mailman/listinfo/taboo-dev

Beware that TABOO is in development, so it is not yet software
that you just install and use. 

COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

Copyright (c) 2003-2004 Kjetil Kjernsmo. Some rights reserved. This
program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
under the same terms as Perl itself.

