XSLT Beginner

virtuous8

Mar 15 2006, 06:31 AM

start with an xml file:

CODE

<?xml encoding="utf-8" version="1.0"?>

<root>
  <contact type="business">
     <name>John</name>
  </contact>
  <contact type="business">
     <name>Jane</name>
  </contact>
  <contact type="business">
     <name>Jack</name>
  </contact>
  <contact type="family">
     <name>Jim</name>
  </contact>
</root>

now write your contacts.xslt file:

CODE

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" />
<xsl:template match="/">
  <html>
  <xsl:for-each select="//contact/[type=business]">
    <xsl:call-template name="contact" />
  </xsl:for-each>
  </html>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template name="family">
   <xsl:value-of select="./name" />
   <br/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

now you need xslt processor to combine xml + xslt, in php there is get Sablotron xslt processor.
example using Sablotron:

CODE

<?php
    $xmlFile = 'contacts.xml';
    $xslFile = 'contacts.xslt';
    // Create a new processor handle
    $xslt_processor= xslt_create() or die("Can't create XSLT processor handle!");
    //set up parameters
    //$parameters = array('searchstring'=>$searchstring);
    $parameters = NULL;
    //perform the XSLT transformation
    $result = xslt_process($xslt_processor, $xmlFile, $xslFile, NULL, NULL, $parameters);
    // Free up the resources
    xslt_free($xslt_processor);
    echo($result);
?>

the output is:
John
Jane
Jack

notes and explanation:
xslt uses powerful xpath expression to navigate through the xml parsetree.

FirefoxRocks

Jun 13 2008, 03:28 AM

First of all, you do not need to use server side XSLT parsing to read an XML file. You can simply specify it as a stylesheet using an XML processing instruction in the XML file like this:

CODE

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

.

Second of all, for a beginner tutorial, I wouldn't make it as complicated with attribute names and multiple templates. I mean <xsl:call-template />? That is definitely not for beginners.

Internet Explorer has the MSXML parser, Gecko-based browsers (Firefox/Mozilla/Flock) has a built-in XSLT parser and Safari/Konqueror can also read XSLT correctly too. You don't need PHP to parse XSLT, browsers can do it.

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