Mapix

Mapix is a try to implement a web framework and CMS based on XSL and XML.

WARNING : This is a work in progress. Conventions and mechanisms described below may not match the actual version.

Mapix framework

A mapix application is composed of four components :

• mapix directory which contains distributed packages
• .htaccess file which rewrites URLs to mapix core handler
• controller.xsl file which contains XSL templates to define routes/controllers for your application
• your application files and/or custom packages

Mapix framework is based on the following principles :

Package everything

• Any concept in your application should be defined in a package.
• A package is a single directory, containing a package.xml file.
• The package.xml file uses the package XML format described in the mapix/package/package.xsd file.
• Packages can contain other packages (sub-package = sub-directory with package.xml)
• The only required package is mapix/core.

Physical vs virtual path

Mapix will automatically execute the nearest controller.xsl file depending on the requested URL. For that purpose any URI is composed of two parts :

• The physical path : the part of URI which matches real files.
• The virtual path : the part of URI which does NOT match real files.

For example, /foo/bar would execute /controller.xsl, whereas /mapix/tests/foo/bar would execute /mapix/tests/controller.xsl file.

MVC

• Models : XSL templates/functions (model.xsl or whatever.model.xsl) or native PHP model classes (whatever.php)
• Views : XSL templates (view.xsl or whatever.view.xsl)
• Controllers : XSL templates (controller.xsl or whatever.controller.xsl)

EXSLT

• Mapix uses EXSLT to enable native (PHP) class loading and method calling.
• Classes can be loaded with <xsl:include href="exslt://path/to/native/class"/>, .php should be ommited.
• mapix/core classes are automatically loaded when controller.xsl is executed.
• Methods can be executed with the XPath expression class:method(...).
• See mapix/tests/controller.xsl for examples.

Mapix CMS

Mapix CMS is built on top of Mapix framework. It consists in many packages :

• mapix/admin : admin site
• mapix/demo : demo site
• mapix/html : HTML generic templates
• mapix/themes : HTML/CSS templates
• ...

Admin site

This site is based on the ExtJS user interface. On startup, admin site search and load *.app.js and *.app.css files. These files define ExtJS applications that will be used in the administration site, such as file editors or explorers :

• file editor : a file explorer
• xml editor : a simple xml tree editor
• text editor : a wrapper for Codepress
• image editor : a basic image editor
• package manager : install/uninstall packages
• ...