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XSLT

XSLT stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations and is used to transform XML documents into other formats like HTML. XSLT uses two input files - the XML data file and an XSL stylesheet file containing templates that select data from the XML file and insert it into the output document framework. The XSLT processor reads the XML file and applies the templates to transform it according to the instructions in the XSL file.

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57 views30 pages

XSLT

XSLT stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations and is used to transform XML documents into other formats like HTML. XSLT uses two input files - the XML data file and an XSL stylesheet file containing templates that select data from the XML file and insert it into the output document framework. The XSLT processor reads the XML file and applies the templates to transform it according to the instructions in the XSL file.

Uploaded by

keerthana.mca2022
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PPT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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XSLT

Reference:
www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek/ cit597-
2002/Lectures/xslt.ppt
XSLT
• XSLT stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language
Transformations
• XSLT is used to transform XML documents into
other kinds of documents--usually, but not
necessarily, XHTML
• XSLT uses two input files:
– The XML document containing the actual data
– The XSL document containing both the “framework” in
which to insert the data, and XSLT commands to do so
Very simple example
• File data.xml:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="render.xsl"?>
<message>Howdy!</message>

• File render.xsl:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0”
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<!-- one rule, to transform the input root (/) -->
<xsl:template match="/">
<html><body>
<h1><xsl:value-of select="message"/></h1>
</body></html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
The .xsl file
• An XSLT document has the .xsl extension
• The XSLT document begins with:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/
XSL/Transform">
• Contains one or more templates, such as:
<xsl:template match="/"> ... </xsl:template>
• And ends with:
</xsl:stylesheet>
Finding the message text
• The template <xsl:template match="/"> says to
select the entire file
– You can think of this as selecting the root node of the
XML tree
• Inside this template,
– <xsl:value-of select="message"/> selects the
message child
– Alternative Xpath expressions that would also work:
• ./message
• /message/text() (text() is an XPath function)
• ./message/text()
Putting it together
• The XSL was:
<xsl:template match="/">
<html><body>
<h1><xsl:value-of select="message"/></h1>
</body></html>
</xsl:template>

• The <xsl:template match="/"> chooses the root


• The <html><body> <h1> is written to the output file
• The contents of message is written to the output file
• The </h1> </body></html> is written to the output file

• The resultant file looks like:


<html><body>
<h1>Howdy!</h1>
</body></html>
How XSLT works
• The XML text document is read in and stored as a
tree of nodes
• The <xsl:template match="/"> template is used to
select the entire tree
• The rules within the template are applied to the
matching nodes, thus changing the structure of the
XML tree
– If there are other templates, they must be called explicitly
from the main template
• Unmatched parts of the XML tree are not changed
• After the template is applied, the tree is written out
again as a text document
Where XSLT can be used
• With an appropriate program, such as Xerces, XSLT
can be used to read and write files
• A server can use XSLT to change XML files into
HTML files before sending them to the client
• A modern browser can use XSLT to change XML
into HTML on the client side
– This is what we will mostly be doing in this class
• Most users seldom update their browsers
– If you want “everyone” to see your pages, do any XSL
processing on the server side
– Otherwise, think about what best fits your situation
Modern browsers
• Internet Explorer 6 best supports XML
• Netscape 6 supports some of XML
• Internet Explorer 5.x supports an obsolete version
of XML
– IE5 is not good enough for this course
– If you must use IE5, the initial PI is different (you can
look it up if you ever need it)
xsl:value-of
• <xsl:value-of select="XPath expression"/>
selects the contents of an element and adds it to
the output stream
– The select attribute is required
– Notice that xsl:value-of is not a container, hence it
needs to end with a slash

• Example (from an earlier slide):


<h1> <xsl:value-of select="message"/> </h1>
xsl:for-each
• xsl:for-each is a kind of loop statement
• The syntax is
<xsl:for-each select="XPath expression">
Text to insert and rules to apply
</xsl:for-each>
• Example: to select every book (//book) and make an
unordered list (<ul>) of their titles (title), use:
<ul>
<xsl:for-each select="//book">
<li> <xsl:value-of select="title"/> </li>
</xsl:for-each>
</ul>
Filtering output
• You can filter (restrict) output by adding a criterion
to the select attribute’s value:
<ul>
<xsl:for-each select="//book">
<li>
<xsl:value-of
select="title[../author='Terry Pratchett']"/>
</li>
</xsl:for-each>
</ul>
• This will select book titles by Terry Pratchett
Filter details
• Here is the filter we just used:
<xsl:value-of
select="title[../author='Terry Pratchett'"]/>
• author is a sibling of title, so from title we have to
go up to its parent, book, then back down to author
• This filter requires a quote within a quote, so we need
both single quotes and double quotes
• Legal filter operators are:
= != &lt; &gt;
– Numbers should be quoted, but apparently don’t have to be
But it doesn’t work right!
• Here’s what we did:
<xsl:for-each select="//book">
<li>
<xsl:value-of
select="title[../author='Terry Pratchett']"/>
</li>
</xsl:for-each>
• This will output <li> and </li> for every book, so we will
get empty bullets for authors other than Terry Pratchett
• There is no obvious way to solve this with just xsl:value-
of
xsl:if
• xsl:if allows us to include content if a given
condition (in the test attribute) is true
• Example:
<xsl:for-each select="//book">
<xsl:if test="author='Terry Pratchett'">
<li>
<xsl:value-of select="title"/>
</li>
</xsl:if>
</xsl:for-each>
• This does work correctly!
xsl:choose
• The xsl:choose ... xsl:when ... xsl:otherwise
construct is XML’s equivalent of Java’s
switch ... case ... default statement
• The syntax is:
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="some condition">
... some code ...
</xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise>
... some code ... • xsl:choose is often
</xsl:otherwise> used within an
</xsl:choose>
xsl:for-each loop
xsl:sort
• You can place an xsl:sort inside an xsl:for-each
• The attribute of the sort tells what field to sort on
• Example:
<ul>
<xsl:for-each select="//book">
<xsl:sort select="author"/>
<li> <xsl:value-of select="title"/> by
<xsl:value-of select="author"> </li>
</xsl:for-each>
</ul>
– This example creates a list of titles and authors, sorted
by author
xsl:text
• <xsl:text>...</xsl:text> helps deal with two
common problems:
– XSL isn’t very careful with whitespace in the document
• This doesn’t matter much for HTML, which collapses all
whitespace anyway (though the HTML source may look ugly)
• <xsl:text> gives you much better control over whitespace; it
acts like the <pre> element in HTML
– Since XML defines only five entities, you cannot
readily put other entities (such as &nbsp;) in your XSL
• &amp;nbsp; almost works, but &nbsp; is visible on the page
• Here’s the secret formula for entities:
<xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes">&amp;nbsp;</xsl:text>
Creating tags from XML data
• Suppose the XML contains
<name>Dr. Dave's Home Page</name>
<url>http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek</url>
• And you want to turn this into
<a href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek">
Dr. Dave's Home Page</a>
• We need additional tools to do this
– It doesn’t even help if the XML directly contains
<a href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek">
Dr. Dave's Home Page</a> -- we still can’t move it to the
output
– The same problem occurs with images in the XML
Creating tags--solution 1
• Suppose the XML contains
<name>Dr. Dave's Home Page</name>
<url>http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek</url>
• <xsl:attribute name="..."> adds the named attribute to the
enclosing tag
• The value of the attribute is the content of this tag
• Example:
<a>
<xsl:attribute name="href">
<xsl:value-of select="url"/>
</xsl:attribute>
<xsl:value-of select="name"/>
</a>
• Result: <a href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek">
Dr. Dave's Home Page</a>
Creating tags--solution 2
• Suppose the XML contains
<name>Dr. Dave's Home Page</name>
<url>http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek</url>
• An attribute value template (AVT) consists of braces { }
inside the attribute value
• The content of the braces is replaced by its value
• Example:
<a href="{url}">
<xsl:value-of select="name"/>
</a>
• Result: <a href="http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~matuszek">
Dr. Dave's Home Page</a>
Modularization
• Modularization--breaking up a complex program
into simpler parts--is an important programming
tool
– In programming languages modularization is often
done with functions or methods
– In XSL we can do something similar with
xsl:apply-templates
• For example, suppose we have a DTD for book
with parts titlePage, tableOfContents, chapter,
and index
– We can create separate templates for each of these parts
Book example
• <xsl:template match="/">
<html> <body>
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</body> </html>
</xsl:template>

• <xsl:template match="tableOfContents">
<h1>Table of Contents</h1>
<xsl:apply-templates select="chapterNumber"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="chapterName"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="pageNumber"/>
</xsl:template>
• Etc.
xsl:apply-templates
• The <xsl:apply-templates> element applies a
template rule to the current element or to the
current element’s child nodes
• If we add a select attribute, it applies the template
rule only to the child that matches
• If we have multiple <xsl:apply-templates>
elements with select attributes, the child nodes
are processed in the same order as the <xsl:apply-
templates> elements
When templates are ignored
• Templates aren’t used unless they are applied
– Exception: Processing always starts with select="/"
– If it didn’t, nothing would ever happen
• If your templates are ignored, you probably forgot
to apply them
• If you apply a template to an element that has
child elements, templates are not automatically
applied to those child elements
Applying templates to children
• <book>
<title>XML</title> With this line:
<author>Gregory Brill</author> XML by Gregory Brill
</book>

• <xsl:template match="/">
<html> <head></head> <body>
<b><xsl:value-of select="/book/title"/></b>
<xsl:apply-templates select="/book/author"/>
</body> </html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="/book/author">
by <i><xsl:value-of select="."/></i> Without this line:
</xsl:template> XML
Calling named templates
• You can name a template, then call it, similar to the way you
would call a method in Java
• The named template:
<xsl:template name="myTemplateName">
...body of template...
</xsl:template>
• A call to the template:
<xsl:call-template name="myTemplateName"/>
• Or:
<xsl:call-template name="myTemplateName">
...parameters...
</xsl:call-template>
Templates with parameters
• Parameters, if present, are included in the content of
xsl:template, but are the only content of xsl:call-
template Single quotes inside double
• Example call: quotes make this a string
<xsl:call-template name="doOneType">
<xsl:with-param name="header" select="'Lectures'"/>
<xsl:with-param name="nodes" select="//lecture"/>
</xsl:call-template>
• Example template:
This parameter is a
<xsl:template name="doOneType">
typical XPath expression
<xsl:param name="header"/>
<xsl:param name="nodes"/>
...body of template...
</xsl:template>
• Parameters are matched up by name, not by position
Thoughts on XSL
• XSL is a programming language--and not a particularly
simple one
– Expect to spend considerable time debugging your XSL
• These slides have been an introduction to XSL and
XSLT--there’s a lot more of it we haven’t covered
• As with any programming, it’s a good idea to start simple
and build it up incrementally: “Write a little, test a little”
– This is especially a good idea for XSLT, because you don’t get a lot
of feedback about what went wrong
• I use jEdit with the XML plugin
– I find it to be a big help, expecially with XML syntax
– My approach is: write (or change) a line or two, check for syntax
errors, then jump to IE and reload the XML file
The End

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