XSLT: Mastering XML Transformations

by Doug Tidwell

Overview

After years of anticipation and delay, the W3C finally released the XSLT 2.0 standard in January 2007. The revised edition of this classic book offers practical, real-world examples that demonstrate how you can apply XSLT stylesheets to XML data using either the new specification, or the older XSLT 1.0 standard.

XSLT is a critical language for converting XML documents into other formats, such as HTML code or a PDF file. With XSLT, you get a thorough understanding of XSLT and XPath and their relationship to other web standards, along with recommendations for a honed toolkit in an open platform-neutral, standards-based environment. This book:

• Covers the XSLT basics, including simple stylesheets and methods for setting up transformation engines
• Walks you through the many parts of XSLT, particularly XSLT's template-based approach to transformations
• Applies both XSLT 1.0 and 2.0 solutions to the same problems, helping you decide which version of XSLT is more appropriate for your project
• Includes profuse examples that complement both the tutorial and the reference material

The new edition of XSLT has been updated thoroughly to explain XSLT 2.0's many dependencies, notably XML Schema and XPath 2.0. Want to find out how the 2.0 specification improves on the old? This book will explain.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780596527211
Publisher:	O'Reilly Media, Incorporated
Publication date:	07/03/2008
Edition description:	Second Edition
Pages:	986
Sales rank:	315,023
Product dimensions:	7.10(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Doug Tidwell is a senior programmer at IBM. He has more than a sixth of a century of programming experience, and has been working with markup languages for more than a decade. He was a speaker at the first XML conference in 1997, and has taught XML classes around the world. His job as a Cyber Evangelist is to look busy and to help people use new technologies to solve problems. Using a pair of zircon-encrusted tweezers, he holds a master's degree in computer science from Vanderbilt University and a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Georgia. He lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, with his wife, cooking teacher Sheri Castle (see her web site at http://www.sheri-inc.com) and their daughter Lily.

Table of Contents

Preface; About This Book; Where I’m Coming From; How This Book Is Organized; Conventions Used in This Book; How to Contact Us; Safari® Enabled; Acknowledgments for the Second Edition; Acknowledgments from the First Edition; Chapter 1: Getting Started; 1.1 The Design of XSLT; 1.2 XML Basics; 1.3 Installing XSLT Processors; 1.4 Summary; Chapter 2: The Obligatory Hello World Example; 2.1 Goals of This Chapter; 2.2 Transforming Hello World; 2.3 How a Stylesheet Is Processed; 2.4 Stylesheet Structure; 2.5 Sample Gallery; 2.6 Summary; Chapter 3: XPath: A Syntax for Describing Needles and Haystacks; 3.1 The XPath Data Model; 3.2 Location Paths; 3.3 Attribute Value Templates; 3.4 Datatypes; 3.5 XPath Operators; 3.6 [2.0] Comments in XPath Expressions; 3.7 [2.0] Types of XSLT 2.0 Processors; 3.8 The XPath View of an XML Document; 3.9 Summary; Chapter 4: Creating Output; 4.1 Goals of This Chapter; 4.2 Generating Text; 4.3 Numbering Things; 4.4 Formatting Decimal Numbers; 4.5 [2.0] Formatting Dates and Times; 4.6 Using and ; 4.7 Dealing with Whitespace; 4.8 Summary; Chapter 5: Branching and Control Elements; 5.1 Goals of This Chapter; 5.2 Branching Elements of XSLT; 5.3 Invoking Templates by Name; 5.4 Parameters; 5.5 Variables; 5.6 Using Recursion to Do Most Anything; 5.7 A Stylesheet That Emulates a for Loop; 5.8 Summary; Chapter 6: Creating Links and Cross-References; 6.1 Using the XML ID, IDREF, and IDREFS Datatypes; 6.2 XSLT’s Key Facility; 6.3 Generating Links in Unstructured Documents; 6.4 Summary; Chapter 7: Sorting and Grouping Elements; 7.1 Sorting Data with ; 7.2 [2.0] The Element; 7.3 Grouping Nodes; 7.4 [2.0] New Grouping Syntax in XSLT 2.0; 7.5 Summary; Chapter 8: Combining Documents; 8.1 The document⁠(⁠ ⁠) Function; 8.2 The document⁠(⁠ ⁠) Function and Sorting; 8.3 Implementing Lookup Tables; 8.4 Grouping Across Multiple Documents; 8.5 [2.0] Using XSLT 2.0 to Simplify Things; 8.6 [2.0] The doc⁠(⁠ ⁠) and doc-available⁠(⁠ ⁠) Functions; 8.7 [2.0] The collection⁠(⁠ ⁠) Function; 8.8 [2.0] The unparsed-text⁠(⁠ ⁠) and unparsed-text-available⁠(⁠ ⁠) Functions; 8.9 Summary; Chapter 9: Extending XSLT; 9.1 The XSLT Extension Mechanism; 9.2 [2.0] Creating New Functions with ; 9.3 Example: Generating Multiple Output Files; 9.4 Creating Custom Collations; 9.5 Generating Hidden Word Graphics; 9.6 Example: Generating an SVG Pie Chart; 9.7 Writing Extensions in Other Languages; 9.8 Using Extension Functions from the EXSLT Library; 9.9 Accessing a Database with an Extension Element; 9.10 Creating a Photo Album with an Extension Element; 9.11 Summary; XSLT Reference; XPath Reference; XPath Node Types; XPath Node Tests; XPath Axes; The XPath Context; XPath 1.0 Datatypes; [2.0] XPath 2.0 Datatypes; Operators and Keywords; Operator Precedence—XPath 1.0; [2.0] Operator Precedence—XQuery 1.0 and XPath 2.0; XSLT, XPath, and XQuery Function Reference; Kinds of Functions; XML Schema Overview; Declaring Elements and Attributes; Defining Datatypes; Using an XML Schema in a Stylesheet; [2.0] Regular Expressions; Simple Expressions; Subexpressions; Quantifiers; [XPath] Reluctant Quantifiers; Processing Modes; [XPath] Anchors; Back-references; Metacharacters; Single-Character Escapes; Multiple-Character Escapes; Character Groups; XSLT Formatting Codes; Formatting Codes for Numbers; Formatting Codes for Dates and Times; XSLT 2.0 Migration Guide; Powerful New Features in XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0; Potential Errors; Approaches to Migration; Glossary; Colophon;