Inside Technique : Building a Content Server with XML and ASP : Installing the Demo

This concludes our XML Content Server implementation. To play with the story server we recommend you download our sample files. The sample requires IIS 4 or later and the Microsoft XML component.

Installing the Demonstration

You must have IIS, ASP, and Microsoft's XML parser installed. Next, download and unzip the sample files. Unzip these files into your web root (or a virtual directory on your site).

In the root (or virtual) directory, you will find three ASP files: story.asp, editStory.asp, and editStyle.asp. The story.asp displays the story index and individual stories. Edit Story and Edit Style are for editing the corresponding XML story and XSL template files.

In addition, two directories will be created, a SRC and a CACHE directory. The SRC directory contains all the raw XML and XSL files. The CACHE directory is used by our disk caching scheme. When files are updated using the on-line editor, the CACHE directory (or specific cached file) is deleted. The Content Server never deletes (but will overwrite edited files) in the SRC directory.

After installing, you should try running the story.asp page. If the story index (2 stories) are displayed, you are all set. From here you can try editing the files. If you get errors writing to the disk you probably need to configure Windows NT to allow the ASP to write to the CACHE and SRC directories. If you get an XML object error, make sure the XML parser is installed.

If you are truly adventurous and want to help improve our Content Server we have a few suggestions:

1. Extend the index.xml file to include more meta information
2. Remove the duplicate meta-information (author and title) from the main articles.
3. Write an ISAPI filter that allows nicer URL's to the stories
4. Add a security mechanism as currently anyone can add or edit a document
5. Add DTD validation of the articles

© 1997-2000 InsideDHTML.com, LLC. All rights reserved.