Misc

  • XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation)
  • Specifies how to convert a set of XML files into another data format (i.e. HTML)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  ...
</xsl:stylesheet>
  • When generating HTML or XML with an XSLT stylesheet, the text is fully normalized
  • Occurrences of < and & have to be converted to &lt; and &amp; (respectively) or enclosed in a CDATA section: <![CDATA[...]]>
  • {$name} :  Use a variable or parameter outside of an XSLT tag
<a href="{$url}">text</a>
  • {@name} :  Use an attribute outside of an XSLT tag
<a href="{@url}">text</a>

Functions

document

document(string)
  • Access nodes in an external document
<xsl:value-of select="document('file.xml')/root-element/child-element[@attr-name=$myValue]"/>

text

text()
  • Extract only the text value of the node (not the descendants)
<xsl:value-of select="text()"/>

Flow of control

Built-in rule
  • The default rule
  • When an element is reached that has no matching template tag, or when apply-templates is called for the current element
  • The text value of the current element is processed, and then the children elements are processed, recursively
  • Attributes are not processed
Defined rules
  • When an element has a matching template, the built-in template rule is not applied
  • If the template includes a call to apply-templates for the current element, then the built-in rule is applied to the element

Terms

  • Element: an XML tag
  • Attribute: a name-value pair in an XML tag
  • Node: an element or attribute (a single piece of data in the document tree)
  • XSLT element: an XSLT tag (xsl:...)
  • Rule: a template element (xsl:template)

Misc

  • The XML prolog is not required, but it's safer to use it, so that the proper encoding can be specified; a version attribute is required
<?xml version="1.0" [encoding="..."]?>
  • A namespace attribute is required in the root element, and a version attribute
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">...</xsl:stylesheet>
<xsl:output method="<xml,html,text>"
    [omit-xml-declaration="<yes,no>"]
    [indent="<yes,no>"]
    [cdata-section-elements="..."]
/>