Processing: Dispatching

A browser starts a request by connecting to a dispatcher. Currently a dispatcher is a Java Servlet responsible for setting up and starting the translation. It does this by creating a context. The context encapsulates processing rules by keeping track of processing parameters, the source document, and filters that perform the actual translation.

The context can be very dynamic. Up until the translation begins, each component involved in the translation has the ability to change attributes of the context. This allows for things like the source document defining a stylesheet to be processed against it, and the stylesheet determining the media type.

A dispatcher creates a context by asking the context factory for a context that matches a URI. The context factory searches for the URI in rules specified in the dispatch.xml file. Once a match is found, the context is created with attributes defined in the dispatch.xml file.

At this point the context can be processed.