Hello, world! – speedata Publisher
Description: The classic: “Hello, world!”. Or: what does a simple document look like? The Publisher always works with two files: a data file (data.xml) …

Version 5.9.2

# Hello, world!

The classic: “Hello, world!”. Or: what does a simple document look like?

The Publisher always works with two files: a data file (`data.xml`) containing the content and a layout file (`layout.xml`) with the rules for how that content should appear in the PDF. Both must be valid XML. A good choice for editing them is an XML editor or the free Visual Studio Code editor.

| Want to try this right away? Run `sp new helloworld` to create a directory with both files. Then `cd helloworld` and `sp` to generate the PDF.

## The two files

The data file (`data.xml`) contains the data — here just a short text:

    <data>Hello world!</data>

The layout file (`layout.xml`) describes what should happen with the data:

    <Layout
      xmlns="urn:speedata.de:2009/publisher/en"
      xmlns:sd="urn:speedata:2009/publisher/functions/en">

      <Record element="data">
        <PlaceObject>
          <Textblock>
            <Paragraph>
              <Value select="."/>
            </Paragraph>
          </Textblock>
        </PlaceObject>
      </Record>
    </Layout>

## Generating the PDF

Save both files in an empty directory, open a terminal in that directory and run the Publisher:

    $ sp

The `$` represents the shell prompt and is not typed. The result is a PDF file `publisher.pdf` with one page: the text “Hello world!” in the top left corner.

| For Windows users: if the Publisher cannot create the PDF, it may be because the same file is still open in another program (Adobe Reader, Windows Explorer).

## The example explained

The data file can have any structure as long as it is well-formed XML (see Glossary). In this case there is just one element `<data>` with the text content `Hello world!`.

The layout file step by step:

    <Layout                                              <!--1-->
      xmlns="urn:speedata.de:2009/publisher/en"
      xmlns:sd="urn:speedata:2009/publisher/functions/en">

      <Record element="data">                            <!--2-->
        <PlaceObject>                                     <!--3-->
          <Textblock>
            <Paragraph>
              <Value select="."/>                         <!--4-->
            </Paragraph>
          </Textblock>
        </PlaceObject>
      </Record>
    </Layout>

1. The root element `Layout` with two namespaces. The second namespace (`sd:`) is not needed here yet, but should always be included — it is required for the built-in functions.
2. `Record` defines what should happen when the Publisher encounters the element `<data>` in the data file. Since `<data>` is the root element, this Record is called automatically at startup.
3. `PlaceObject` is the command to output something into the PDF — text, images, tables, boxes, etc.
4. `select="."` is an XPath expression: the dot `.` means “the current data element”. Here the current element is `<data>`, and its text content is `Hello world!`. This is exactly the text that appears in the PDF.

## What’s next?

The chapter Programming explains in detail how layout and data work together — in particular the interplay of `Record` and `ProcessNode`, which allows processing nested data structures.

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