Custom Markup Language

[knightcon]

Hey does anyone know how I would go about implementing a custom markup language like what facebook uses (http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Fb:name). It would be implemented as a client-side read markup using AJAX on external websites on different domains. I am using PHP on my main server and the javascript AJAX library files are called by external websites from my /scripts/ subfolder.

Top Domain: http://www.example.com/
AJAX Library: http://www.example.com/apis/

thanks.

 

[woiwky]

I'm not entirely sure exactly what it is you're trying to do, but by a custom markup language do you mean an xml-based format? Like SOAP or RSS? The link you provided just redirects me to facebook's main page, so I couldn't really tell anything from that. The "Fb:name" part does look like xml to me though.

If you do mean an xml-based format, then that isn't too hard. All you really have to do is decide on what a full outline of a document created in your format should look like. You could also make a scheme/dtd to definitively define the format, but that's a bit harder.

Also, in case you aren't aware, AJAX doesn't allow cross-domain requests. But I don't see why people can't just upload the JS files onto their own site.

If you could explain what you're trying to accomplish a bit more, I might be able to provide more detailed information. Right now I'm just not sure about it.

 

[knightcon]

Sorry bout that Woiwky,

I fully intended for the AJAX libraries to be imported from my site. What I am trying to do is when a user has something like...

<lu:user format="long" /> is currently logged in to <lu:server />

It is replaced by my server with HTML something like...

<a href="http://www.example.com/profile.php?userID=17233223">Username</a> is logged in to <a href="http://www.example.com/server.php?serverIP=172.19.5.225">Mystic</a></p>

The tags will be scripted into the HTML itself and the AJAX will be used to alter the tags to match the dynamic data off my web server.

Ta

 

[woiwky]

Ah, so you just basically need to process a document for tags and replace them with relevant data. You could try to use an XML processor, but because you're integrating xml and html they may not work very well.

How much experience do you have with regular expressions? Depending on how complex the tags can be, you might be able to collect all the data with a single regex. Are they all in single-tag form like the ones in your example?

 

[knightcon]

Unfortunately no this was just an example. I don't have much experience with regex although I would probably research the subject online. Whatever is done needs to be done using AJAX. Some of the tags used will be wrap-around tags which are used to format certain text and add HTML to that same text.