It's a Transforming Process!

So, right now I'm working on a gadget that takes in generic info and sends out Fusion Charts XML. It's a SOAP service and there will be many service endpoints, but right now there are only 2, one for a simple, single series bar chart, and one for a multi-series "drag node chart" (think network diagram with drag able nodes).

I chose to go about it in a different manner than I've seen a lot of people use for Fusion Charts, though. The prevailing way that I've seen people create Fusion Charts XML is to take the data in on the JavaScript side and create the XML, in string format, in the JavaScript. For this approach, I have only one thing to say: Building XML in JavaScript is less than optimal (translation: it sucks).

So, I decided to go about it in the web service itself. My web service is written in Java and once you get the question into Java a few, more palatable, alternatives suggest themselves. In my web service there are 3 distinct transformations: request object to traditional object; traditional object to simplified XML; simplified XML to Fusion Charts XML.

The request object to traditional object transformation is really the beast. The inputs for the endpoints are comma-delimited strings. A lot of work goes into parsing those strings and putting them into the more traditional object. I have my inputs be comma-delimited strings so that the Presto JUMP requests can invoke them effectively. I could just as easily have one of my endpoints be a direct invocation of the more traditional object, but as I understand it, that's a bit of a bad practice.

Once I have my traditional object the easiest step occurs. In this step I use XStream to serialize the traditional object into a simplified XML. If you've never used XStream, it's very simple, very powerful and I recommend it highly.

The last step is where the real magic happens, though. Here is where I transform the simplified XML into Fusion Charts XML. I use the Saxonica XSLT engine to do the transformation and it's a matter of using the right tool for the right job (with regards to using XSLT to transform XML).

XSLT is designed to transform XML, whether it be from XML to XML or XML to some other language. You write a transformation wherein you process the source XML and then create a document in the desired format. It's really not all that hard to take the simplified XML and transform it into the Fusion Charts XML.

Once I have the Fusion Charts XML document I send it back out of the service in a special response that contains the document in string format and the name of the Fusion Chart swf file that will correctly process that document. When my response arrives at its destination all that needs to be done is input the Fusion Charts XML document into the Flash engine with the correct swf file pulled up and voila, it's all done.

I like this approach in that it moves all of the heavy lifting out of the display side (the mashlet, in my case) and into a much more suitable environment, that being a Java web service. I don't have to do endless string concatenation that is hard to debug inside of the JavaScript presentation layer. As a matter of fact, I can write all of the pieces independently of each other and then put them all together in the end. It's a nice break up of all of the work.

An acknowledgment needs to go to @angleofsight for his help in getting this whole process set up. Without his paving of the way I wouldn't be anywhere near as far along as I am right now.