jsDatasource 1.0

jsDatasource is an XPCOM component for any XUL applications. It can be useful for extensions for Firefox or any other Mozilla-based applications, or XulRunner based application.

XUL templates allow to generate XUL elements from a list of data. With it, you can fill a listbox for example.

See the template guide on MDC to know more about it.

Natively, the XUL template engine can retrieve data coming from a RDF content, an XML file, or a SQLite database. It can also retrieve from other kind of datasources, if you provide a component implementing this datasource (called a Query Processor).

jsDatasource is a Query Processor. It allows you to use javascript objects as datasource for your XUL Templates.

For example, you may have this data:

var jsdata = [
    {name:'something'},
    {name:'hello'},
    {name:'world'},
];

You notice that the variable is an array containing JS objects. It may be also an nsIEnumerator object or an nsIArray object.

You can then use this array as a datasource for your XUL Template:

<vbox id="root" datasources="javascript:jsdata" querytype="javascript"
    ref="." idprefix="">
    <template>
        <query idproperty="" filterfunc="" iteminterface=""/>
        <action>
            <button uri="?" label="?name"/>
        </action>
    </template>
</vbox>

SECURITY WARNING

WARNING: DON'T USE IT WITH UNTRUSTED DATA, COMING FROM A WEB SERVICE OR FROM THE USER. YOU COULD HAVE SECURITY ISSUES!!

If you retrieve for example js objects from an unprivileged script, or if you "eval" some source code from a web service (you MUST NOT do this kind of code anyway), objects could implement getters that do unsafe things during the content generation...

If you want to use external data, retrieve them in JSON format for example, and use the JSON object to parse data.

Licence

This component is released under an opensource licence : Mozilla Public Licence.

Features

This datasource provider supports:

sorting
filters
recursion

Installation

The component should work at least for Firefox 3.6/Gecko 1.9.2 and higher.

Copy the jsDatasource.js file into the components/ directory of your extension or your xul application.

If your project targets only Firefox 3.6/Gecko 1.9.2 and lower, installation is finished.

If your project targets Firefox 4/Gecko 2.0 and higher, you should add these lines into your chrome.manifest file:

  component {EA696B77-AF80-4063-89AD-4985B14D0EBC} components/jsDatasource.js
  contract @mozilla.org/xul/xul-query-processor;1?name=javascript {EA696B77-AF80-4063-89AD-4985B14D0EBC}

Basic use

On the root element of your template:

Indicate in the datasources attribute "javascript:" followed by the name of the javascript variable name, containing the data. You can indicate a property of an object: "javascript:myobject.jsdata"
The querytype attribute should be equal to "javascript".

And that's all. The javascript variable should be a Javascript array (or a js iterator/generator). This array should contains javascript objects as item. In your template, indicate where to put values of items properties, with the usual syntax: "?propertyname".

Note: even if the ref attribute is not used by jsDatasource, you must set it on the root element, with a random value, typically ref=".". Else content won't be generated.

Example:

<vbox id="root" datasources="javascript:jsdata" querytype="javascript" ref=".">
    <template>
        <query/>
        <action>
            <button uri="?" label="?name"/>
        </action>
    </template>
</vbox>

Id of generated elements

Like other datasources providers (sqlite, xml, rdf), jsDatasource create an id attribute on generated elements. By default, the value of this attribute is an UUID number.

If the root element have an id, generated elements will have this id as prefix and a counter value as suffix. With the previous example, generated buttons are:

<vbox id="root" ...>
    <template> ...</template>
    <button id="root:1" label="something"/>
    <button id="root:2" label="hello"/>
    <button id="root:3" label="world"/>
</vbox>

You can indicate to use the value of a property of objects. On the <query> element, indicate the property name in the idproperty attribute.

If this property contain only numbers, it's better to have real name (for document.getElementById, etc..). In this case, you can indicate a prefix to add to the value, in the idprefix attribute on the root element of the template.

For example:

<vbox id="root" datasources="javascript:jsdata" querytype="javascript"
    ref="." idprefix="btn-">
    <template>
        <query idproperty="?name"/>
        <action>
            <button uri="?" label="?name"/>
        </action>
    </template>
</vbox>

The result will be:

<vbox id="root" ...>
    <template> ...</template>
    <button id="btn-something" label="something"/>
    <button id="btn-hello" label="hello"/>
    <button id="btn-world" label="world"/>
</vbox>

Sorting

The XUL template engine can sort results before using it to generate the content.

As usual, use the sort and sortDirection attributes:

sort to indicate the property on which the sort is applying. Ex: sort="?name"
sortDirection to indicate the direction, "ascending" or "descending"

You can indicate also the type of data, with the sortType attribute, specific to jsDatasource. Possible values are "int", "float" or "string" (default).

Data from an nsISimpleEnumerator or nsIArray object

Instead of using a javascript array,you can use an nsISimpleEnumerator or nsIArray object.

Since these kind of objects contain necessarly XPCom objects, jsDatasource should know the interface to query on these items.

You must indicate the interface with the iteminterface attribute on the <query> element.

<query iteminterface="nsIURI">
<action>
    <hbox uri="?">
        <label value="?host" />
        <label value="?port" />
        <label value="?path" />
    </hbox>
</action>

It items have no interface, and are only javascript objects with a wrappedJSObject property, indicate wrappedJSObject in iteminterface.

Filtering results

You may provide a function which will filter results. Indicate its name into the filterfunc attribute on <query>. This function is the same kind of function as callback for Array.filter(). It should accepts 4 arguments:

the object containing results (null if the datasource is not an Array object)
the current value
the current index
the Array object (null if the datasource is not an Array object)

Recursion

Your data may have some properties which contain themselves array of data, and you may want to iterate over them.

To activate recursion, just indicate the property name into the uri attribute.