Is it possible to build a recursive DCT structure?

I would like to build a menu structure such as this (example is simplified - note that the lack of formatting hides indentation of nested menu-items):

<root description="some menu">
<menu-item label="Our Organisation">
<menu-item label="About Us"/>
<menu-item label="Corporate Publications"/>
</menu-item>
<menu-item label="Resources for Employees">
<menu-item label="Induction"/>
<menu-item label="Your Well-Being">
<menu-item label="Staff Care Services"/>
</menu-item>
</menu-item>
</root>

<menu-item> can be nested to arbitrary depth.

I have attempted to build a DCT to capture this structure:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data-capture-requirements dcr-validation="none" name="">
<ruleset name="dct">
<root-container location="root" name="root">

<item name="description" pathid="@description">
<label>Description</label>
<description/>
<text required="t"/>
</item>

<container location="menu-item" name="menu-item" refid="menu-item" min="0" max="unbounded">
<label>Menu-item</label>
<description/>

<item name="name" pathid="@name">
<label>Label</label>
<description/>
<text required="t"/>
</item>

<container location="" name="menu-item" min="0" max="unbounded">
<itemref refid="menu-item" min="0" max="unbounded"/>
</container>

</container>

</root-container>
</ruleset>
</data-capture-requirements>

But this does not perform as expected - menu-items cannot be added to the nested container.

I need to minimize the use of containers, because nested menu-items get unwieldy.

I am using datacapture6.0.dtd

There may be a different way to do this kind of thing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Russell

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Comments

Russell_Healy

I should have read the manual first!

This seems to work ok:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data-capture-requirements dcr-validation="none" name="">
<ruleset name="dct">
<root-container location="root" name="root">

<item name="description" pathid="@description">
<label>Description</label>
<description/>
<text required="t"/>
</item>

<container combination="or"
location="menu-item"
name="menu-item"
refid="sub-menu-item"
min="0"
max="unbounded"
default="0">

<item name="menu-item" pathid="menu-item/@label">
<label>menu-item</label>
<description/>
<text required="t"/>
</item>

<item name="menu-ref" pathid="menu-ref/@file">
<label>menu-ref</label>
<description/>
<browser/>
</item>

<itemref name="menu-item-ref" refid="sub-menu-item"/>

</container>

</root-container>
</ruleset>
</data-capture-requirements>

Not sure if the output is anything near correct yet, but the form seems to work ok. It's horrible to use because of the deep nesting though!

Thanks

Russell

Adam Stoller

Nesting to an arbitrary depth is probably not going to work well with "iwov" style DCRs - you might have to use an "xml" style DCR with a DTD like:<!ELEMENT root (menu-item+)>
<!ATTLIST root description CDATA>
<!ELEMENT menu-item (menu-item*)>
<!ATTLIST menu-item label CDATA>I haven't played around much with "xml" style DCRs - so you'll have to spend some time reading the manuals, searching the forums, and/or waiting for additional assistance here - but I think that's about the only way you'll get what you're looking for.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

Migrateduser

Russell .. was just curious where are u upto with that, how you r rendering the menu in the end. Will be interested in sharing the details there?

!Thanks
J

iqwinox

So I gave this a try using this DTD modified a bit, like this:

<!ELEMENT categories (category+)>
<!ELEMENT category (category*)>
<!ATTLIST category
name CDATA #REQUIRED
value CDATA #REQUIRED
>

and I used iwdtd2dct.ipl to generate my datacapture.cfg and I got this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data-capture-requirements dcr-validation="none"
dtd-system-identifier="categories.dtd" name="">
<ruleset name="dct">
<root-container location="categories" name="categories">
<container location="category" max="unbounded" name="category" refid="category">
<label>Category</label>
<description/>
<item name="name" pathid="@name">
<label>Name</label>
<description/>
<text required="t"/>
</item>
<item name="value" pathid="@value">
<label>Value</label>
<description/>
<text required="t"/>
</item>
<container combination="or" location="" name="category_1_IREF">
<itemref max="unbounded" min="0" refid="category"/>
</container>
</container>
</root-container>
</ruleset>
</data-capture-requirements>

All of this worked like a champ. I was able to create a recursive DCTand generate the nested XML. Thanks for the pointers! However, I did run into an issue, and I have run out of tricks for this one. After the initial creation of the xml dcr, when I try to open the dcr for edits, the dct will not render sibling categories. For instance, if I have the following XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<categories>
<category name="North America" value="North America">
<category name="United States" value="United States">
<category name="Texas" value="Texas"/>
<category name="Indiana" value="Indiana"/>
</category>
</category>
</categories>

the dct will render North America -> United States -> Texas but will fail to render Indiana. Any ideas???

Environment is Teamsite 6.5 on Win 2K sp 4

Adam Stoller

I'd suggest checking with support on this - it sounds like the system is respecting the DTD in one instance but not in another - and this is either a bug in the UI, the underlying XML parsing engine, or you've managed to getthe first part to work in an unsupported manner and the second part is therefore is unsupported and would need to be turned into a feature request.

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

frogman

Oh the joys of Teamsite and Navigation!

I've been playing with this structure - we have one implementation using nested containers. However, they are limited to a maximum of 4 levels deep (I'm not sure that a navigation structure that went much deeper than this would be particularly usable from a UI perspective!).

I am finding that if I create nested levels using either Fish's or Russel's DTD or I can still only go 8 deep - then I do not get the option to create further levels (The add/delete/up/down icons are not displayed). Does anybody know why this might be (perhaps its a limitation of Teamsite's own code?)

I'd be interested to hear about any other paradigms that might help us achieve our goal of providing a navigation paradigm that separates content from nav structure and allows an arbitrary number of levels for each branch.

Adam Stoller

Have you tried contacting Support yet? (I suggest you provide them with a "step-by-step-how-to-repeat" process)
If they can reproduce the problem in-house they'll be able to feed the information to engineering...

--fish
Senior Consultant, Quotient Inc.
http://www.quotient-inc.com

frogman

Fish,

I've raised a support call for this.....I'll update when I've got an answer.