WebEdit is a lightweight service that transforms HTML form submittals into XML and forwards them to a configured service for further processing (e.g. SRW Update or sendmail).
WebEdit works by constructing a simple linear XML document from the HTML form submittal where the XML element names match the HTML field names (omitting the numeric prefixes) and the XML element values match the HTML field values. WebEdit then selects an XSL stylesheet based on the target XML schemaURI (e.g. http://alcme.oclc.org/wikid/docs/xsl/webedit/webEdit2oai_dc.xsl) and uses it to transform the constructed linear XML record into the native record format (e.g. MARC or METS) based on its recognition of the HTML field=XML element name relationship. This is the progression:
Submitted HTML form key/value pairs
001.title=Hamlet&002.creator=Shakespeare
Linear XML representation
<webedit>
<title>Hamlet</title>
<creator>Shakespeare</creator>
</webedit>
Target XML record (the native record)
<oai_dc:dc ...>
<dc:title>Hamlet</dc:title>
<dc:creator>Shakespeare</dc:creator>
</oai_dc>
Generally speaking, WebEdit supports multiple databases via a key encoded in the request's pathInfo. This key maps to the XSL stylesheet and target service that are to be applied.