An XSLT Examplecopyright2007NYCircuits Inc7SXSW 2007XSLTBook3/11/2007draftThis tutorial will present a very simple XSLT stylesheet example.

This tutorial is being created with a program called Screenbook Maker. Screenbook Maker creates an xml file for each tutorial. The tutorial will use this xml file as an example.

The xml file is here.

]]>[Empty]The sbook.xml fileJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.comFirst we create the the stylesheet element and the root element.

<?xml version="1.0"?>

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

  <xsl:template match="/">
    Hello World
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

 

]]>[Empty]Root elementJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.comWe save the preceding stylesheet into a file named example.xsl, and use the Xalan XSLT processor to transform the input sbook.xml file into an output file named sample.html

We will use the command line version of the Xalan XSLT processor, available from xml.apache.org.

The syntax for the transformation is

java org.apache.xalan.xslt.Process -in xmlSource
    -xsl stylesheet -out outputfile

]]>pic03.pngSave and transformJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.compic04.pngThe outputJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.comThe xslt processor starts at the root of the xml document and proceeds down left to right. It visits each element of the xml input and then checks for a match in the stylesheet. If it finds a match, it prints out the text inside the matching template.

So, the processor found a matching template for the root. It then printed out the contents of that template and was done.

]]>[Empty]The processorJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.comLet's change the root template to go back to the input file and keep looking for matches:

<xsl:template match="/">
  <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

]]>[Empty]Apply templatesJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.comNow let's add a template to match the page element in the sbook.xml file.

<xsl:template match="page">
  <xsl:value-of select="text" disable-output-escaping="yes"/>
  <hr/>
</xsl:template>

]]>[Empty]Template for page elementJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.compic08.pngThe new outputJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.comhere.]]>[Empty]Complete sample xsltJoe Orr[Empty][Empty]Joe OrrAll Rights Reservedjorr@nycircuits.com