RayApp changes the way you write Web applications. Instead of writing Perl code that prints HTML, or embedding the code inside of HTML markup, the Perl applications only process and return Perl data. No markup handling is done in the code of individual application, inside of the business logic. The applications code just returns Perl hash.

To get the (X)HTML which is the traditional goal of Web applications, the Perl data is then serialized to XML, and postprocessed by XSLT to the desired output format, which may be HTML, XHTML, WML or anything else. In order to provide all parties involved (application programmers, Web designers, ...) with a common specification of the data layer, data structure description (DSD) file is a mandatory part of the applications. The data returned by the Perl code is fitted into the placeholders in the DSD XML document, creating the output XML stream.

This way, application programmer knows what data is expected from their applications, and Web designer knows what XMLs the prostprocessing stage will be dealing with. In addition, application code can be tested separately from the presentation part, and tests for both application and presentation part can be written independently, in parallel.

Of course, the necessary data passed from the application to the presentation can change in the course of time. Both application programmer and Web designer can use the old and new DSD and regression tests to easily migrate to the new structure. The system will never produce unexpected data output, since the data output is based on DSD which is known in advance.

Installation

Download the RayApp-2.004.tar.gz distribution, extract it (tar xvzf), change to the RayApp-x.xxx directory, and do

perl Makefile.PL && make && make test && make install

Documentation

After installation, man RayApp or perldoc RayApp should give you the documentation for this software.

Author

Copyright (c) Jan Pazdziora 2001--2004