RVEX uses a single agent that you copy into any existing database to ouput properly-nested XML or JSON from your Notes views on the web. You can use the exported data as the source for AJAX/ Web 2.0 systems, such as the data source for an XMLHttpRequest object.



While the ?readviewentries URL action provides an XML or JSON representation of a view, the values are unnested and are sometimes unusable without an XSL transformation. Developers usually bypass ?readviewentries and create an agent that properly nests views as XML or put XML tags around view column data. This works for simple views only, but fails when nesting categorized view data.



The goal of RVEX (pronounced AR-VEX) is to create an agent that will export a properly-nested XML representation of a view. The agent can then be included in any application without further modification.



For the base output, you simply call the agent and specify the view name.

Example: rvex.nsf/rvex?openagent&viewname=colors



The output of the agent is highly customizable through additional URL parameters. Parameters determine, for example, whether the column values should be presented as CDATA and if the results should be transformed with XSL or CSS. The "cat" parameter works like RestrictToCategory view command to return a single category from the view.



JSON output was added in release .92 and improved in release .93. You specify viewtype=102 in your URL.



JSON currently works for only the most simple views. Additional JSON output for more elaborate views will be forthcoming.



The name is derived as follows:

RVEX = ReadViewEntries - XML



Contributions and testers are most welcome!