Entries classified under splice

Kid 0.6 is available.

This is a feature release with some pretty important enhancements including Template Inheritence, Match Templates (kind of like XSLT's), cElementTree support, and a refined Python API. Quite a bit of time was spent on the documentation as well.

The Release Notes have more information on everything that has changed.

Kid is an XML based template language for Python that merges the best of Zope's TAL, PHP, and XSLT into a single coherent package. It was created to provide a simple method of generating dynamic, well-formed XML documents using familiar concepts from popular text templating languages.

Download

http://lesscode.org/dist/kid/

Release Notes

http://lesscode.org/doc/kid/0.6/notes.html

Project Information

http://lesscode.org/projects/kid/

Kid 0.5 is available and I think I finally like it enough to start dumping out some example templates and API usage...

This is the second post in response to cross-breading ZPT and XSLT. I'd like to dig into how I'd like templating to work in Kid and Leslie opens the door for me:

... maybe this is the sort of thing Ryan's thinking about-- I wonder how hard it would be to hack this into Kid? It would give only a subset of XSLT's capabilities in trade for simplicity, and would only offer the pull approach, but it would give XML-pipelining to a ZPT-ish technology.

Leslie de 0xDECAFBAD talks a bit about cross-breading ZPT and XSLT and mentions Kid along the way. This is the first in a series of response posts.

I've been searching for the perfect Python based XML template language. I was happy to find TAL (and specifically, SimpleTAL) a while back but, although neither of us wants to admit it, we've been growing apart for some time now. I spent last week looking for options and, after careful consideration and planning (read: beer and a nap), decided to just build the XML template language I really wanted.

There's at least four billion and nine text based template languages for Python but there aren't a lot of options that fit nicely into the XML tool-chain. Or, if they do fit nicely into the XML tool-chain, they don't fit nicely with Python.

My dreamboat XML template language would combine the pythonicness and simplicity of PTL, the templating features and pipeline-ability of XSLT, and the terseness of Zope's TAL. I'm building it, it's called Kid, and I'm making good progress to be honest.

But I have this overwhelming NIH feeling so I've decided the best thing to do is to run through the current set of tools and take a professional, objective look at why each isn't getting it done for me (i.e. make fun of minor flaws and limitations until I feel better about myself). Herewith, a look at the good and the bad in the Python XML templating space...

I've been working on a weblog/micro-content management system with what I believe are some unique qualities. I've wanted to write about some of the approaches I've taken and how they are (and are not) working out but feel I should provide some kind of context for my ramblings. So I'm going to try to summarize the main aspects of the system real quick so I can start digging in to the more specific stuff.

I've settled on the name "Splice" because I think it has a nice ring to it and is a pretty good one-word description of a major goal of the platform. Nothing has been officially released yet but I have allocated a project on sourceforge.net and plan on bombing the existing code up there within the next week. An initial 0.1 release should follow after about a month or so, assuming I can keep my current pace.

So without further ado, here's a quick breakdown of the planned features of Splice...