The file generator reads an xml document from the local file system or from any url. While url generator may appear to be a more suitable name, it's known as the file generator for historical reasons.

The file generator is the default generator.

• Name : file
• Class: org.apache.cocoon.generation.FileGenerator
• Cacheable: yes - uses the last modification date of the xml document for validation.

The location of the source xml document is specified in the pipeline by the src attribute.

	<map:generate src="document.xml" type="file"/> <!-- The type attribute can be omitted as it is the default generator. -->

You can use an absolute filesystem pathname. See the explanation of file: URLs