Alternative Datatypes

Besides HTML, you can also generate any type of data you wish. You can define a content type to each content. SPINE contains examples of both plain text content and binary content.

changes.xml - plain text content
changes.xml generates an XML feed of changes since a certain date. The content type for this content is set to text/xml. changes.xml uses a style, called xml. The content itself has some extra XML tags and a SPINE tag plugin. The XMLChanges plugin will generate XML data and will insert it into the style.

For instance :

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<changes>
<content name="admin-content" modified="2003-12-22 00:00:59"/>
<content name="admin-message" modified="2003-12-21 02:06:10"/>
<content name="changes.xml" modified="2003-12-22 00:11:30"/>
<content name="graph_stat.png" modified="2003-12-21 13:24:54"/>
<content name="messagetest.html" modified="2003-12-21 01:03:41"/>
<content name="_admin-content-adv" modified="2003-12-22 00:03:11"/>
</changes>

Only the first line is part of the style. The second and last line are hardcoded in the content. The remaining lines are generated by the plugin.

graph_stat.png - binary content
graph_stat.png generates PNG data of the requests statistics from the log handler. The content type for this content is set to image/png. graph_stat.png uses an empty style. The content itself (and therefor the entire data part) only contains PieStats plugin. The results of this plugin is PNG data. The plugin itself still allows passing parameters.

for instance :

graph_stat.png?page=index&category=useragent