19. Making life easier

Now that we’ve introduced you to the eej (and node_xslt3 or docker_xslt3) shortcuts, it’s time to introduce you to a couple more.

Irrespective of what environment you work in, there’s an inevitable “edit, compile, test” cycle that you’ll go through. There are many ways to automate this, but the precise details depend on your platform and tools.

Both the Python and Node.js servers in the tutorial will automate a few things for you.

To enable the automation, add “exercise=name” or “answer=name” to the URI. For example:

http://localhost:9000/path/doc?exercise=ex03

That will apply the “exercises/ex03/ex03.xsl” stylesheet to the “path/doc” resource. If you used answer=ex03, it would apply the “answers/ex03/ex03.xsl” stylesheet.