Here, we'll look at additional datasources and how to use your own RDF files as datasources.
Other Mozilla Datasources
Mozilla provides a number of other built-in datasources. Some of them are listed here with a few examples. They work very similarly to the bookmarks, although the fields will be different in each case.
The History List
The history datasource provides access to the user's history list which is the list of URLs the user has visited recently. The resource can be referred to using rdf:history
as the datasource. The table below shows the resources (or fields) that you can retrieve from the history datasource. Put the URL values below where you want the value of the resource to be used.
Date | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Date | Date of last visit |
Name | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Name | Title of the page |
Page | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Page | Page name |
Referrer | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Referrer | Referrer of the page |
URL | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#URL | URL of the page |
Visit Count | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#VisitCount | Number of page visits |
A typical history list will display a tree with a selection of these fields. To use them, just put the URL values above in the label
attributes of the buttons or treecells. You can use NC:HistoryRoot
as the value of the ref
attribute. You can also use the value NC:HistoryByDate
to get the history sorted into days.
Using The History List Example
Let's see an example of displaying the history list. We'll display the history in a tree with three columns, the Name, the URL and the Date.
var el = env.locale; Example 1 : Source
<tree flex="1" datasources="rdf:history" ref="NC:HistoryRoot"> <treecols> <treecol id="name" label="Name" flex="1"/> <treecol id="url" label="URL" flex="1"/> <treecol id="date" label="Date" flex="1"/> </treecols> <template> <rule> <treechildren> <treeitem uri="rdf:*"> <treerow> <treecell label="rdf:https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Name"/> <treecell label="rdf:https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#URL"/> <treecell label="rdf:https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Date"/> </treerow> </treeitem> </treechildren> </rule> </template> </tree>
Other Datasources
The tables below list some of the other datasources available with Mozilla. You can use any of the resources that you want.
- Bookmarks (rdf:bookmarks)
- The bookmarks are generated from the user's bookmark list.
Resources | ||
---|---|---|
Added Date | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#BookmarkAddDate | Date the bookmark was added |
Description | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Description | Bookmark description |
Last Modified | https://home.netscape.com/WEB-rdf#LastModifiedDate | Date of last modification |
Last Visited | https://home.netscape.com/WEB-rdf#LastVisitDate | Date of last visit |
Name | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Name | Bookmark name |
Shortcut URL | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#ShortcutURL | Custom keywords field |
URL | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#URL | The URL to link to |
Possible Bookmarks Roots | |
---|---|
NC:BookmarksRoot | The top level of the bookmarks hierarchy |
NC:IEFavoritesRoot | The bookmark folder that corresponds to the user's IE favorites. |
NC:PersonalToolbarFolder | The bookmark folder that corresponds to the personal toolbar folder. |
- Files (rdf:files)
- A view of the user's files.
Resources | ||
---|---|---|
Name | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Name | Name of the file |
URL | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#URL | URL of the file |
Content-Length | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#Content-Length | The length of the file. |
LastModifiedDate | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#LastModifiedDate | The date that URL was last modified. |
extension | https://home.netscape.com/NC-rdf#extension | The extension of the file, including the period. This property is only available on platforms that use file extensions. |
Possible Files Roots | |
---|---|
NC:FilesRoot | Top level of the filesystem (usually the list of drives) |
A file URL | By using a file URL for the ref attribute, you can select a specific directory to be returned. For example, you might use file:///windows or files:///usr/local. |
The files datasource is an example of a datasource that determines its resources only when necessary. We don't want every file in the filesystem to be determined before the data is displayed. Instead, only the files and directories that the tree element (or other elements) will need to display at a given time will be determined.
Composite Datasources
You can specify multiple datasources in the datasources
attribute by separating them with whitespace as in the example below. This has the effect of reading the data from all the datasources mentioned.
<tree datasources="rdf:bookmarks rdf:history animals.rdf" ref="NC:BookmarksRoot">
This example reads the resources from the bookmarks, history and the animals.rdf file. They are combined into a single composite datasource and can be used as if they were one.
The special datasource rdf:null
corresponds to nothing. You can use this datasource if you want to dynamically set the datasource using a script, but don't want one initially or don't know its exact URL.
Custom RDF Datasources
You can use any of the above internal datasources if you wish. There are several others for mail, address books and searching and so on. However, you might want to use your own RDF datasource stored in an RDF file. The file can be either a local file or a remote file. Just put the URL of the RDF file in the
attribute.datasources
Using RDF files provides just as much functionality as any of the internal datasources. You can use rules to match specific types of content. The attributes on the
element will match if they match the attributes on an RDF rule
Description
element. You can also create RDF files that are hierarchical.
Using RDF file Example
The following is an example of how an RDF file can be used as a datasource. The RDF file is fairly large and can be viewed separately: Source RDF
var el = env.locale; Example 2 : Source View
<tree flex="1" width="200" height="200" datasources="animals.rdf" ref="https://www.some-fictitious-zoo.com/all-animals"> <treecols> <treecol id="name" label="Name" primary="true" flex="1"/> <treecol id="species" label="Species" flex="1"/> </treecols> <template> <rule> <treechildren> <treeitem uri="rdf:*"> <treerow> <treecell label="rdf:https://www.some-fictitious-zoo.com/rdf#name"/> <treecell label="rdf:https://www.some-fictitious-zoo.com/rdf#species"/> </treerow> </treeitem> </treechildren> </rule> </template> </tree>
Here, the data has been generated from the file. The
attribute has been set to the root element in the RDF file, which is the top-level ref
Seq
. This will give us a complete list of animals. If we wanted to, we could set the
attribute to any of the other ref
about
attribute values to limit the set of data that is returned. For example, to display only the reptiles, use a value of https://www.some-fictitious-zoo.com/reptiles
.
Setting the ref
Attribute Example
The example below shows how to display a particular piece of an RDF datasource by setting the
attribute.ref
var el = env.locale; Example 3 : Source View
<window id="example-window" title="History List" xmlns:ANIMALS="https://www.some-fictitious-zoo.com/rdf#" xmlns="https://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"> <button label="Click here to see the mammals the zoo has" type="menu" datasources="animals.rdf" ref="https://www.some-fictitious-zoo.com/mammals"> <template> <rule ANIMALS:specimens="0"></rule> <rule> <menupopup> <menuitem uri="rdf:*" label="rdf:https://www.some-fictitious-zoo.com/rdf#name"/> </menupopup> </rule> </template> </button> </window>
In this case only the mammals are desired, so we select the URI of the mammals list. You will notice that the value of the
attribute in the example is ref
https://www.some-fictitious-zoo.com/mammals
which corresponds to one of the Seq
elements in the RDF file. This causes only the descendants of this list to be returned.
Two rules have been used here. The first rule catches all the resources that have their ANIMALS:specimens
attribute set to 0
. You can see this attribute in the RDF file on each of the Description
elements. Some of them have a value of 0. So in these cases, rule one will match. Because rule one has no content, nothing will be displayed for these ones. This is an effective way to hide data that we don't want to display.
The second rule applies to all other resources and creates a row in a popup menu. The end effect is that we get a popup menu containing all the mammals which have a specimen that is not 0.
Next, we'll look at the full rule syntax.