Mapbuilder is an open source project that implements a framework dynamic web page content from XML documents. The techniques used by this package are now being called AJAX which is shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript + XML.
Mapbuilder consists of a JavaScript library that implements the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The model, view and controller objects to be used in the web page are configured in an XML configuration file. The schema of the configuration file is derived from RDF and is fully described in the mapbuilder configuration documentation.
This User Guide explains how to configure and link Mapbuilder components into a web page. Several different Mapbuilder configurations will be demonstrated along with some ideas for how to include it in the web page layout. The target audience for this tutorial is those tasked with implementing an application in HTML and have a basic understanding of HTML, XML and Javascript. Developer's seeking to extend or modify the code-base should consult the mapbuilder design documentation.
One design goal of mapbuilder is to let page designers do page layout and design, and simply link in mapbuilder JavaScript code using HTML element IDs. Being a JavaScript implementation, CSS and DHTML techniques are then used for manipulating these elements.
Mapbuilder was originally conceived to render Web Map Context documents to create interactive mapping applications on the web. However the modular design framework allows mapbuilder to be extended to handle almost any XML document type.
The tutorial starts with the common steps required to code a mapbuilder application.