Opening an XML document

1. MyFrontEnd JavaScript code queries MyBackend to obtain the XML source of the document to be opened in XMLEditor.
2. MyFrontEnd obtains a “handle” to the instance of XMLEditor contained in its HTML page, possibly using document.getElementById(id) or document.getElementsByTagName("xxe-client"). Let's call this handle xmlEditor.
3. MyFrontEnd invokes xmlEditor.openDocument(xmlSource, documentURI) .

   Note Method openDocument() must be passed a document URI identifying the document being edited. XMLEditor makes very few assumptions about how documents are stored by your web application, so your are free to use a URI of any kind, suffice for this URI to be meaningful to your web application. Using custom URI schemes and/or custom URI authorities is fine as long as the document URI is hierarchical. The syntax of a document URI is thus: scheme://authority/path, with authority being optional. For example, the following URIs are supported: https://cms.acme.com/docs/manual.xml, docs:///0943_3561, and the following URIs are not: mailto:john@acme.com, urn:isbn:9780582035874.

Creating a new XML document rather opening an existing one is done by invoking xmlEditor.newDocumentFromTemplate(templateXMLSource, documentURI) . The main difference with openDocument is that after invoking newDocumentFromTemplate, the saveAsNeeded property of XMLEditor is set to true.

Saving changes

MyFrontEnd may invoke xmlEditor.saveDocument() to save the changes made to the document. Because how documents are stored is entirely the responsibility of MyFrontEnd/MyBackend, this method does nothing at all except setting the saveNeeded property of XMLEditor is set to false.

In order to let MyBackend actually save the document being edited, MyFrontEnd may invoke xmlEditor.getDocument() to first obtain the XML source of the modified document and then send this source to MyBackend.

Similarly, xmlEditor.saveDocumentAs(newDocumentURI) , which may be used to implement the "Save As" command, simply

• changes the documentURI property of XMLEditor to specified URI,
• sets the saveNeeded property is set to false,
• sets the saveAsNeeded property is set to false.

MyFrontEnd almost certainly needs to be informed when changes are made to the document, therefore when these changes need to be saved to the document storage. This is done by registering a "saveStateChanged" listener with XMLEditor as follows: xmlEditor.addEventListener("saveStateChanged", listener) . This listener will receive SaveStateChangedEvent s.

Closing the XML document being edited

MyFrontEnd may invoke xmlEditor.closeDocument() to close the document being edited, if any.

Several properties of XMLEditor, documentIsOpened , documentUID , documentURI , etc, may be used to test whether a document is currently being edited.