Apache Cocoon

Apache Cocoon, usually just called Cocoon, is a web application framework built around the concepts of pipeline, separation of concerns and component-based web development. The framework focuses on XML and XSLT publishing and is built using the Java programming language. The flexibility afforded by relying heavily on XML allows rapid content publishing in a variety of formats including HTML, PDF, and WML. The content management systems Apache Lenya and Daisy have been created on top of the framework. Cocoon is also commonly used as a data warehousing ETL tool or as middleware for transporting data between systems.

The sitemap is at the core of Cocoon. It's here that the web site developer configures the different Cocoon components, and defines the client–server interactions in what Cocoon refers to as the Pipelines.

The components within Cocoon are grouped by function.

Matchers are used to match user requests such as URLs or cookies against wildcard or regular expression patterns. Each user request is tested against matchers in the sitemap until a match is made. It is within a matcher that the response to a particular request is specified.