.. _backend: Using Kiln as an independent backend ==================================== While Kiln provides facilities for creating and serving resources to user clients, it can equally well be used solely as a backend to another system or systems operating as the frontend. There is nothing special or different about such operation, and the same principles and approaches apply. Rather than a user client, such as a browser, making a request to a URL and getting a resource, the frontend system makes the request, perhaps using AJAX, and then operates on the resource. Providing content for incorporation into HTML --------------------------------------------- A common use case is to have Kiln provide content that the frontend then incorporates into its own templating system for display as HTML. Kiln provides an example template and pipeline showing how this might be achieved. The template transforms TEI into HTML, and provides that, plus any metadata, CSS, and JavaScript that might be required for correct display. All of these are made available in individual elements within the XML document that Kiln returns. This allows the frontend system to collate the various pieces as it wishes without having to perform any complicated transformations. Requesting a resource with Python --------------------------------- Sample code for requesting a resource from Kiln using Python:: import requests r = requests.get(kiln_resource_url) xml = r.text # Process XML. ... Requesting a resource with JavaScript ------------------------------------- Sample code for requesting a resource from Kiln using JavaScript (with jQuery):: function xml_content_handler (xml) { // Process XML. } $.get({ url: kiln_resource_url, dataType: 'xml' }).done(xml_content_handler);