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Date: Fri, 5 May 2006 11:00:03 +0200
From: Ferdinand Soethe <ferdinand@apache.org>
Message-ID: <423882074.20060505110003@soethe.net>
To: dev@forrest.apache.org
Subject: Gathering info on location maps
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In preparing for the 0.8-release I'd like to try and refine the
documentation on location maps. Here are a couple of questions that
came to my mind while working through
http://forrest.apache.org/docs_0_80/locationmap.html:

1. Architecture

   a) In which way do locationmaps work?

   Is it

   - a transformation or

   - java code that calculates the final url or
   
   - ???

   b) Where does this processing take place?

   - Everywhere linkrewriter is called?

   c) What are the standard processing steps for

   - a normal url
   - a url in site.xml
   - a site:-url
   - an ext:-url

   (This should really become a new piece of documentation)

2. Docs state that

   > Apache Forrest looks in the standard location for the source file
   > first (by default PROJECT_HOME/src/documentation/content/...), if a
   > file is found in this location then the locationmap is not
   > consulted.

   This is a great feature!

   a) Is it correct to say that lms are evaluated whenever a normal
      URL such as "/blabla.html" cannot be resolved? Even when the
      URL does not begin with lm:?

   b) How do sitemap cascades (such as looking up an image file in
      different places) coexist with locationmaps? Will lm only be
      evaluated when _all_ other matchers have failed?
      
   c) Is it correct to assume that using the lm:-prefix on a URL will
      skip the step of looking for the standard file location?
      Or else what would the standard location on named files be?

   d) So if I wanted to implement tab-specific logos in our skin
      - I just point to a file like logo.gif in the tabs base directory
      - and create a locationmap with a pattern that would resolve all
        those references to a central (main) logo
      and, as a result, would see the local local if there is such a
      file or the main logo if there was none?
        
3. When it says

> The locationmap can be used to rewrite URLs when the page is
> generated. For example, when the locationmap has:
> 
>  <match pattern="rewriteDemo/**">
>    <location src="http://www.domain.org/{1}.xml" />
>  </match>
>         
> 
> With the above match in the locationmap, a link which has
> href="lm:rewriteDemo/index" will be rewritten to an offsite address
> at domain.org

Is it correct to say that the user will see an address of
mysite/rewrite/blablub.hmtl while the content was retrieved from
http://www.domain.org/blablub.xml?

Thanks,
--
Ferdinand Soethe