========================
eZ Components - Document
========================
.. contents:: Table of Contents
:depth: 3
Introduction
============
The document component offers transformations between different semantic markup
languages, like:
- `ReStructured text`__
- `XHTML`__
- `Docbook`__
- `eZ Publish XML markup`__
- Wiki markup languages, like: Creole__, Dokuwiki__ and Confluence__
Likw shown in figure 1, each format supports conversions from and to docbook
as a central intermediate format and may implement additional shortcuts for
conversions from and to other formats. Not each format can express the same
semantics, so there may be some information lost, which is `documented in a
dedicated document`__.
.. figure:: img/architecture.png
:alt: Conversion architecture in document component
Figure 1: Conversion architecture in document component
There are central handler classes for each markup language, which follow a
common conversion interface ezcDocument and all implement the methods
getAsDocbook() and createFromDocbook().
Additionally the document component can render documents in the following
output formats. Those formats cannot be read, but just generated:
- PDF__
__ http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
__ http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/
__ http://www.docbook.org/
__ Document_conversion.html
__ ezxml
__ creole
__ dokuwiki
__ confluence
__ pdf
Markup languages
================
The following markup languages are currently handled by the document
component.
ReStructured text
-----------------
`RsStructured Text`__ (RST) is a simple text based markup language, intended
to be easy to read and write by humans. Examples can be found in the
`documentation of RST`__.
The transformation of a simple RST document to docbook can be done just like
this:
.. include:: tutorial/00_00_convert_rst.php
:literal:
In line 3 the document is actually loaded and parsed into an internal abstract
syntax tree. In line 5 the internal structure is then transformed back to a
docbook document. In the last line the resulting document is returned as a
string, so that you can echo or store it.
__ http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html
__ http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickstart.html
Error handling
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
By default each parsing or compiling error will be transformed into an
exception, so that you are noticed about those errors. The error reporting
settings can be modified like for all other document handlers::
options->errorReporting = E_PARSE | E_ERROR | E_WARNING;
$document->loadFile( '../tutorial.txt' );
$docbook = $document->getAsDocbook();
echo $docbook->save();
?>
Where the setting in line 3 causes, that only warnings, errors and fatal errors
are transformed to exceptions now, while the notices are only collected, but
ignored. This setting affects both, the parsing of the source document and the
compiling into the destination language.
Directives
^^^^^^^^^^
`RST directives`__ are elements in the RST documents with parameters, optional
named options and optional content. The document component implements a well
known subset of the `directives implemented in the docutils RST parser`__. You
may register custom directive handlers, or overwrite existing directive
handlers using your own implementation. A directive in RST markup with
parameters, options and content could look like::
My document
===========
The custom directive:
.. my_directive:: parameters
:option: value
Some indented text...
For such a directive you should register a handler on the RST document, like::
registerDirective( 'my_directive', 'myCustomDirective' );
$document->loadFile( $from );
$docbook = $document->getAsDocbook();
$xml = $docbook->save();
?>
The class myCustomDirective must extend the class ezcDocumentRstDirective, and
implement the method toDocbook(). For rendering you get access to the full AST,
the contents of the current directive and the base path, where the document
resist in the file system - which is necessary for accessing external files.
__ http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/restructuredtext.html#directives
__ http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/ref/rst/directives.html
Directive example
`````````````````
A full example for a custom directive, where we want to embed real world
addresses into our RST document and maintain the semantics in the resulting
docbook, could look like::
Address example
===============
.. address:: John Doe
:street: Some Lane 42
We would possibly add more information, like the ZIP code, city and state, but
skip this to keep the code short. The implemented directive then would just
need to take these information and transform it into valid docbook XML using
the DOM extension.
.. include:: tutorial/00_01_address_directive.php
:literal:
The AST node, which should be rendered, is passed to the constructor of the
custom directive visitor and available in the class property $node. The
complete DOMDocument and the current DOMNode are passed to the method. In this
case we just create a `address node`__ with the optional child nodes street and
personname, depending on the existence of the respective values.
You can now render the RST document after you registered you custom directive
handler as shown above:
.. include:: tutorial/00_02_custom_directive.php
:literal:
The output will then look like::
Address example
John Doe
Some Lane 42
__ http://docbook.org/tdg/en/html/address.html
XHTML rendering
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
For RST a conversion shortcut has been implemented, so that you don't need to
convert the RST to docbook and the docbook to XHTML. This saves conversion time
and enables you to prevent from information loss during multiple conversions::
loadFile( $from );
$xhtml = $document->getAsXhtml();
$xml = $xhtml->save();
?>
The default XHTML compiler generates complete XHTML documents, including header
and meta-data in the header. If you want to in-line the result, you may specify
another XHTML compiler, which just creates a XHTML block level element, which
can be embedded in your source code::
options->xhtmlVisitor = 'ezcDocumentRstXhtmlBodyVisitor';
$document->loadFile( $from );
$xhtml = $document->getAsXhtml();
$xml = $xhtml->save();
?>
You can of course also use the predefined and custom directives for XHTML
rendering. The directives used during XHTML generation also need to implement
the interface ezcDocumentRstXhtmlDirective.
Modification of XHTML rendering
```````````````````````````````
You can modify the generated output of the XHTML visitor by creating a custom
visitor for the RST AST. The easiest way probably is to extend from one of the
existing XHTML visitors and reusing it. For example you may want to fill the
type attribute in bullet lists, like known from HTML, which isn't valid XHTML,
though::
class myDocumentRstXhtmlVisitor extends ezcDocumentRstXhtmlVisitor
{
protected function visitBulletList( DOMNode $root, ezcDocumentRstNode $node )
{
$list = $this->document->createElement( 'ul' );
$root->appendChild( $list );
$listTypes = array(
'*' => 'circle',
'+' => 'disc',
'-' => 'square',
"\xe2\x80\xa2" => 'disc',
"\xe2\x80\xa3" => 'circle',
"\xe2\x81\x83" => 'square',
);
// Not allowed in XHTML strict
$list->setAttribute( 'type', $listTypes[$node->token->content] );
// Decoratre blockquote contents
foreach ( $node->nodes as $child )
{
$this->visitNode( $list, $child );
}
}
}
The structure, which is not enforced for visitors, but used in the docbook and
XHTML visitors, is to call special methods for each node type in the AST to
decorate the AST recursively. This method will be called for all bullet list
nodes in the AST which contain the actual list items. As the first parameter
the current position in the XHTML DOM tree is also provided to the method.
To create the XHTML we can now just create a new list node (
) in the
current DOMNode, set the new attribute, and recursively decorate all
descendants using the general visitor dispatching method visitNode() for all
children in the AST. For the AST children being also rendered as children in
the XML tree, we pass the just created DOMNode () as the new root node to
the visitNode() method.
After defining such a class, you could use the custom visitor like shown
above::
options->xhtmlVisitor = 'myDocumentRstXhtmlVisitor';
$document->loadFile( $from );
$xhtml = $document->getAsXhtml();
$xml = $xhtml->save();
?>
Now the lists in the generated XHTML will also the type attribute set.
Writing RST
^^^^^^^^^^^
Writing a RST document from an existing docbook document, or a
ezcDocumentDocbook object generated from some other source, is trivial:
.. include:: tutorial/00_03_write_rst.php
:literal:
For the conversion internally the ezcDocumentDocbookToRstConverter class is
used, which can also be called directly, like::
$converter = new ezcDocumentDocbookToRstConverter();
$rst = $converter->convert( $docbook );
Using this you can configure the converter to your wishes, or extend the
convert to handle yet unhandled docbook elements. The converter is, as usaul
configured using its option property, and the options are defined in the
ezcDocumentDocbookToRstConverterOptions class. There you may configure the
header underlines used, the bullet types or the line wrapping.
Extending RST writing
`````````````````````
As said before, not all existing docbook elements might already be handled by
the converter. But its handler based mechanism makes it easy to extend or
overwrite existing behaviour.
Similar to the example above we can convert the
docbook element back
to the address RST directive.
.. include:: tutorial/00_04_address_element.php
:literal:
The handler classes are assigned to XML elements in some namespace, "docbook"
in this case. It is registered in line 18 for the element "address". The class
itself has to extend from the ezcDocumentElementVisitorHandler class, which is
in this case already extended by ezcDocumentDocbookToRstBaseHandler, which
provides some convenience methods for RST creation, like renderDirective() used
in this example.
The handler is called, whenever the element, it has been registered for, occurs
in the docbook XML tree. In this case it has to append the generated RST part
for this element to the RST document - and may call the general conversion
handler again for its child elements. This example converts the above shown
docbook XML back to::
.. _address_example:
===============
Address example
===============
.. address::
John Doe
Some Lane 42
Which ignores any special address sub elements for the simplicity of the
example. For more examples on element handlers check the existing
implementations.
XHTML
-----
Converting XHTML or HTML to a document markup language is a non trivial task,
because XHTML elements are often used for layout, ignoring the actual semantics
of the element. Therefore the document component allows to stack a set of
filters, which each performs a specific conversion task. The default filter
stack may work fine, but you may want to also implement custom filters
depending on the contents of the filtered website, or to cover additional
sources of meta data information, like RDF, Microformats or similar.
The available filters are:
- ezcDocumentXhtmlElementFilter
This filter just maintains the common semantics of XHTML elements by
converting them to their docbook equivalents. It ignores common class names.
This filter is the most basic and you probably want to always add this one to
the filter stack.
- ezcDocumentXhtmlXpathFilter
The XPath filter takes a XPath expression to locate the root of the document
contents. It makes no sense to use this one together with the content locator
filter. This is a more static, but also more precise way to tell the
converter where to find the actual contents.
- ezcDocumentXhtmlMetadataFilter
This filter extracts common meta data from the XHTML head, and converts it
into docbook section info elements.
- ezcDocumentXhtmlTablesFilter
HTML tables are especially often used for layout markup. This filter takes a
threshold, and if the table text factor drops below this threshold the table
is ignored. The same is true for stacked tables.
- ezcDocumentXhtmlContentLocatorFilter
The content locator filter tries to find the actual article in the markup of
a website, ignoring the surrounding layout markup. This seems to work well
for example for common news sites.
By default just the element and meta data filters are used. So the conversion
of a common website, like the `introduction article`__ from ezcomponents.org,
results in a docbook document containing all lists for the navigation, etc..
.. include:: tutorial/01_00_read_html.php
:literal:
So let's additionally use the XPath filter to pass the location of the actual
content to the conversion:
.. include:: tutorial/01_01_read_html_filtered.php
:literal:
With this additional filter, the contents are correctly found and converted
properly.
__ http://ezcomponents.org/introduction
Writing XHTML
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Writing XHTML from docbook is very similar to the approach used for writing
RST: It the same handler based mechanism, so you may want to check that chapter
to learn how to extend it for unhandled docbook elements.
.. include:: tutorial/01_02_write_html.php
:literal:
As you can see, it happens the same way, as for other conversion from Docbook
to any other format.
HTML styles
^^^^^^^^^^^
By default inline CSS is embedded in all generated HTML, to create a more
appealing default experience. This may of course be deactivated and you may
also reference custom style sheets to be included in the generated HTML.
.. include:: tutorial/01_03_write_html_styled.php
:literal:
For this we again use the converted directly to be able to configure it as we
like.
eZ Xml
------
eZ XML describes the markup format used internally by `eZ Publish`__ for
storing markup in content objects. The format is roughly specified in the `eZ
Publish documentation`__.
Modules are often register custom elements, which are not specified anywhere,
so there might be several elements not handled by default.
__ http://ez.no/ezpublish
__ http://ez.no/doc/ez_publish/technical_manual/4_0/reference/xml_tags
Reading eZ XML
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Reading eZ XML is basically the same as for all other formats:
.. include:: tutorial/02_00_read_ezxml.php
:literal:
As always the document object is either constructed from an input string or
file. To convert into docbook you may just use the method getAsDocbook().
Link handling
`````````````
Inside eZ XML documents link URIs are replaced with IDs, which reference the
links inside the eZ Publish database, to ensure that a changed link is update
globally. The replacing of such links is handled by a class extending from
ezcDocumentEzXmlLinkProvider. By default dummy URLs are added to the documents.
URLs are either referenced directly by their ID, a node ID, or an object ID.
Those parameters are passed to the link provide, which then should return an
URL for that.
.. include:: tutorial/02_01_link_provider.php
:literal:
The link provider is only implemented as a trivial stub, but you can establish
a database connection there and actually fetch the required data. I this case
the generated docbook document look like::
Paragraph
Some content, with a link.
The link provider is set again as a option of the converter. Like shown for the
docbook conversions of the other handlers, you can register element handlers
for yet unhandled eZ XML elements on the converter, too.
Wrting eZ XML
^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Writing eZ XML works nearly the same as reading. It again uses a XML based
element handled, like shown in the Docbook to RST conversion in more detail.
For the link conversion an object extending from ezcDocumentEzXmlLinkConverter
is used, which returns an array with the attributes of the link in the eZ XML
document.
Wiki markup
-----------
Wiki markup has no central standard, but is used as a term to describe some
common subset with lots of different extensions. Most wiki markup languages
only support a quite trivial markup with severe limitations on the recursion of
markup blocks. For example no markup really tables containing lists, or
especially not tables containing other tables.
The document component implements a generic parser to support multiple wiki
markup languages. For each different markup syntax a tokenizer has to be
implemented, which converts the implemented markup into a unified token stream,
which can then be handled by the generic parser.
The document component currently supports reading three wiki markup languages,
but new ones are added easily by implementing another tokenizer. Supported are:
- Creole__, developed by a initiative with the intention to create a unified
wiki markup standard. This is the default wiki language, and currently the
only one which can be written.
Creole currently only supports a very limited set of markup__, all further
markup additions are still up to discussion.
- Dokuwiki__ is a popular wiki system, for example used on `wiki.php.net`__
with a quite different syntax, and the most complete markup support, even
including something like footnotes.
- Confluence__ is a common Java based wiki with an entirely different and most
uncommon syntax, which has mainly been implemented to prove the generic
nature of the parser.
All markup languages are tested against all examples from the respective
markup language documentation, there might still be cases where the parsers of
the default implementation behaves slightly different from the implementation
in the document component.
__ http://www.wikicreole.org/
__ http://www.wikicreole.org/wiki/Elements
__ http://www.dokuwiki.org/dokuwiki
__ http://wiki.php.net/
__ http://confluence.atlassian.com/renderer/notationhelp.action?section=all
Reading wiki markup
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Reading wiki texts basically works like for any other markup language:
.. include:: tutorial/03_00_read_wiki.php
:literal:
As said, by default the Creoletokenizer is used. The same result can be
produced with dokuwiki markup and switching the tokenizer:
.. include:: tutorial/03_01_read_wiki_confluence.php
:literal:
Writing wiki markup
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Until now only writing of creole wiki markup is supported. Since creole does
not support a lot of the markup available in docbook, not all documents might
get converted properly. Because it does not even support explicit internal
references, we cannot even simulate footnotes like in HTML.
If you want to add support for such conversions, it works exactly like the
docbook RST conversion and can be extended the same way.
.. include:: tutorial/03_02_write_wiki.php
:literal:
PDF
---
PDF (Portable Document Format) has been developed to provide a document
format, which can be presented software and system independent. Because of
this it is often used as a pre-print document exchange format.
The document componen can generate PDF document from all other input formats
and offers a language very similar to CSS to apply custom styling to the
generated output. Additionally it supports adding custom parts, like footers
and headers, to the PDF document.
Reading PDF
^^^^^^^^^^^
The document component for now does not support reading PDF documents.
Writing PDF
^^^^^^^^^^^
Writing PDF basically works like writing any other format supported by the
document component, like the basic example shows:
.. include:: tutorial/04_01_create_pdf.php
:literal:
First we include some RST file to create a Docbook file from it, because, like
described before, Docbook is the central conversion format.
Afterwards the Docbook document is loaded by the PDF class and saved. When
converting the document to a string the PDF is renderer using the default
options and the default driver. The result of this rendering call can be
watched here: `04_01_create_pdf.pdf`__.
__ 04_01_create_pdf.pdf
Output writers
``````````````
Since there are numerous different PDF renderers in the PHP world and the
available ones might depend on the current environment, the document component
supports different PDF driver, as wrapper around different existent libraries.
For now two implementation exist for pecl/har and TCPDF, but it is fairly easy
to write another one, for another PDF class.
Haru
""""
libharu__ is a open source PDF generation library, written in C, and wrapped
by the haru PHP extension, available from PECL__. If PEAR is correctly setup
on your machine it should install as easy as::
pear install pecl/haru
The Haru driver is pretty fast, but currently has issues with some special
characters. It is the default driver, but can be explicitly used by setting
the driver option on the PDF class, like::
$pdf = new ezcDocumentPdf();
$pdf->options->driver = new ezcDocumentPdfHaruDriver();
__ http://libharu.org
__ http://pecl.php.net/package/haru
TCPDF
"""""
TCPDF is a pure PHP based PDF generation library, available from
`tcpdf.org`__. To use the TCPDF driver you need to download and include its
main class before rendering the PDF. It supports all aspects of PDF rendering
required by the document component, but has some bad coding practices, like:
- Throws lots of warnings and notices, which you might want to silence by
temporarily changing the error reporting level
- Reads and writes several global variables, which might or might not
interfere with your application code
- Uses eval() in several places, which results in non-cacheable OP-Codes.
The TCPDF driver can be used after including the TCPDF source code, using::
$pdf = new ezcDocumentPdf();
$pdf->options->driver = new ezcDocumentPdfTcpdfDriver();
__ http://tcpdf.org
Styling the PDF
```````````````
The PDF output can be styled using a CSS like language, which assigns styles
based on the Docbook XML structure. The default styling rules are defined in
the `default.css`__.
__ http://svn.ez.no/svn/ezcomponents/trunk/Document/src/document/pdf/style/default.css
The first most relevant part are the general layout options, which can be
defined for the common article root node in the Docbook XML file. You can set
global font options there, like::
article {
// Basic font style definitions
font-size: "12pt";
font-family: "serif";
font-weight: "normal";
font-style: "normal";
line-height: "1.4";
text-align: "left";
// Basic page layout definitions
text-columns: "1";
text-column-spacing: "10mm";
// General text layout options
orphans: "3";
widows: "3";
}
The meaning of the first set of options should be obvious from CSS. We require
each value to be wrapped by quotes for easier parsing, though.
The second set of options defines options for multi-column layouts, which are
not available in the web, but quite common in generated PDF documents. You can
specify the number of text columns, as well as the distance between the text
columns here.
The third set in this example defines lesser known text layout options like
the handling of `orphans and widows`__, which specify the handling of
overlapping parts of paragraphs on page wrapping.
You can, of course, apply those styles to any elements in your document, using
the common CSS addressing rules, like::
// Emphasis node anywhere in the document
emphasis { ... }
// Title element directly below a section element
section > title { ... }
// Title element anywhere below a section element
section title { ... }
// Title element with the ID "first_title"
title#first_title { ... }
// Title element with the class "foo"
title.foo { ... }
// emphasis node directly below a title with class "foo", anywhere in a
// section with the ID "first"
section#first title.foo > emphasis { ... }
The values and `measures`__ for the properties are very similar to the
properties in CSS. For example the margin and padding properties accept one-
to four-tuples of values, with the same respective meaning like in CSS.
Another central formatting element, which is special to the PDF generation, is
the virtual element "page"::
page {
page-size: "A4";
page-orientation: "portrait";
padding: "22mm 16mm";
}
The page-size property accepts several known page size identifiers and the
page-orientation defines the orientation of a page. You can also address any
page directly by its ID, which will be 'page_1' for the first page, or its
class, which will be "right", or "left", depending on the current page number.
A detailed description of all available `PDF style options`__ is available
here__.
__ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Widows_and_orphans
__ measures
__ Document_styles.html
__ Document_styles.html
Measures
""""""""
The properties in the PDF component accept different measures, which are:
- "mm", Millimeters, the default measure, if none is specified
- "pt", Points, 72 points per inch
- "px", Pixel, depends on the set resolution, by default also 72 points per
inch
- "in", Inch
The unit "Points" is most common for font sizes, while millimeters or inches
will probably more useful for page paddings. You are free to choose any of
them and can even combine different units in one tuple, like::
para {
// Top margin: 12 mm; Right margin: .1 inch; Bottom margin: 10 points,
// Left margin: 1 pixel
margin: "12 .1in 10pt 1px";
}
PDF parts
`````````
PDF parts are additional parts in a rendered document, like headers and
footers. You can implement and register them yourself, and they are activated
by different triggers, like:
- on document creation
- on page creation
- when a document has been finished
The default implementation for headers and footers is triggered on page
creation and renders the title of the document, its author and a page number
in the header or the footer. To develop a custom PDF part you should extend
from the ezcDocumentPdfPart class.
For the following document we are using a set of custom styles, as well as a
header and a footer to customize the rendered PDF document. The additional
custom CSS changes the default font and the page border:
.. include:: tutorial/custom.css
:literal:
The code using the custom CSS and headers and footers then looks like:
.. include:: tutorial/04_02_create_pdf_styled.php
:literal:
The first part, the creation of a Docbook document from a RST document is just
the same like in the first example.
Afterwards we load the above mentioned custom.css as an additional style. You
can load as many styles as you want. If multiple styles are loaded, the latter
ones always (partly) redefine the first styles.
After that two custom PDF parts are registered using their respective option
class to configure their skin. The footer should only show the page number,
while the header should display all parts (title and author), but the page
number.
At the end of the example the document is created as usual, and looks like
this: `04_02_create_pdf_styled.pdf`__ Since the source document does not
include any author information, this information is also not rendered in the
header.
__ 04_02_create_pdf_styled.pdf
Hyphenating
```````````
Proper hyphenation is crucial for nice text rendering especially for justified
paragraph formatting. Since hyphenation is highly language dependent you can
create and use your own custom hyphenator - the default one doesn't do any
hyphenation by default, but just keeps every word as it is.
Custom hyphenators can be implemented by extending from the abstract class
ezcDocumentPdfHyphenator. The only need to implement one Method,
```splitWord()```, which should return possible splitting points of the given
word, as documented in the ezcDocumentPdfHyphenator class.
The custom hyphenator can be configured in the ezcDocumentPdfOptions class,
like this::
$pdf = new ezcDocumentPdf();
$pdf->options->hyphenator = new myHyphenator();
The hyphenator will then be used by all text renderers during the rendering
process.
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