Technocate A Part of JEE Technologies: XSTL

XSLT Tutorial

XSL stands for EXtensible Stylesheet Language, and is a style sheet language for XML documents. XSLT stands for XSL Transformations. In this tutorial you will learn how to use XSLT to transform XML documents into other formats, like XHTML.
It started with XSL and ended up with XSLT, XPath, and XSL-FO.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) started to develop XSL because there was a need for an XML-based Stylesheet Language.
XSL = Style Sheets for XML
XSL consists of three parts:

XSLT - a language for transforming XML documents
XPath - a language for navigating in XML documents
XSL-FO - a language for formatting XML documents.

XSLT is a language for transforming XML documents into XHTML documents or to other XML documents.

XPath is a language for navigating in XML documents.

What is XSLT?

XSLT stands for XSL Transformations
XSLT is the most important part of XSL
XSLT transforms an XML document into another XML document
XSLT uses XPath to navigate in XML documents
XSLT is a W3C Recommendation

How to transform XML into XHTML using XSLT ?

Declare:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:transform version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

Example:

Step1: Make a Xsltdemo.xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>

<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="Xsltdemo.xsl"?>

<cd>

<title>Empire Burlesque</title>

<artist>Bob Dylan</artist>

<company>Columbia</company>

</cd>

<cd>

<title>Hide your heart</title>

<artist>Bonnie Tyler</artist>

<company>CBS Records</company>

</cd>

</catalog>

Step2: Make a Xsltdemo.xsl file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"

xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">

<html>

<body>

<h2>My CD Collection</h2>

<th>Title</th>

<th>Artist</th>

<th>Country</th>

<th>Company</th>

</tr>

<xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">

<tr>

</tr>

</xsl:for-each>

</table>

</body>

</html>

</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

XSLT Template: An XSL style sheet consists of one or more set of rules that are called templates.

A template contains rules to apply when a specified node is matched.

The <xsl:template> element is used to build templates.
The match attribute is used to associate a template with an XML element. The match attribute can also be used to define a template for the entire XML document. The value of the match attribute is an XPath expression (i.e. match="/" defines the whole document)

Tags that are used in XSLT:

<xsl:template> : Syntax <xsl:template match="/">
<xsl:value-of> : The <xsl:value-of> element is used to extract the value of a selected node. <xsl:value-of select="catalog/cd/title"/>
<xsl:for-each> : The <xsl:for-each> element allows you to do looping in XSLT.   <xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">
    <tr>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
    </tr>
    </xsl:for-each>
<xsl:sort>: The <xsl:sort> element is used to sort the output. <xsl:sort select="artist"/>
<xsl:if> : The <xsl:if> element is used to put a conditional test against the content of the XML file. <xsl:if test="price > 10">
        <tr>
          <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
          <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
        </tr>
      </xsl:if>
The <xsl:choose> element is used in conjunction with <xsl:when> and <xsl:otherwise> to express multiple conditional tests. <xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">
    <tr>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
      <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="price > 10">
          <td bgcolor="#ff00ff">
          <xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
          <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
        </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
    </tr>
    </xsl:for-each>
The <xsl:apply-templates> element applies a template to the current element or to the current element's child nodes.

Examples:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<h2>My CD Collection</h2>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="cd">
<p>
<xsl:apply-templates select="title"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="artist"/>
</p>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="title">
Title: <span style="color:#ff0000">
<xsl:value-of select="."/></span>
<br />
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="artist">
Artist: <span style="color:#00ff00">
<xsl:value-of select="."/></span>
<br />
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

2. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
<h2>My CD Collection</h2>
<table border="1">
    <tr bgcolor="#9acd32">
      <th>Title</th>
      <th>Artist</th>
    </tr>
    <tr>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="catalog/cd/title"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="catalog/cd/artist"/></td>
    </tr>

<xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">
      <xsl:sort select="artist"/>
      <tr>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
        <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
      </tr>
    </xsl:for-each>

<xsl:if test="price > 10">
        <tr>
          <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
          <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
        </tr>
      </xsl:if>

<xsl:for-each select="catalog/cd">
    <tr>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
      <xsl:choose>
        <xsl:when test="price > 10">
          <td bgcolor="#ff00ff">
          <xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
        </xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
          <td><xsl:value-of select="artist"/></td>
        </xsl:otherwise>
      </xsl:choose>
    </tr>
    </xsl:for-each>
</table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Advance XSLT:
XSLT can be used to transform a document from XML to XHTML. We did this by adding an XSL style sheet to the XML file and let the browser do the transformation.

Even if this works fine, it is not always desirable to include a style sheet reference in an XML file (e.g. it will not work in a non XSLT aware browser.)

A more versatile solution would be to use a JavaScript to do the transformation.

By using a JavaScript, we can:

do browser-specific testing
use different style sheets according to browser and user needs

XSLT On Client Side:
XSLT On ServerSide:

Technocate A Part of JEE Technologies

XSTL

No comments:

Post a Comment

About Me

Blog Archive