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Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days

Sep 16, 2005

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Introducing XSLT

Today you're going to see how to use XSLT to manipulate, extract, and format data in XML documents without having to resort to programming your own XML processors. XSLT is actually part of the larger specification Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). XSLT has become the most popular part of XSL because it's relatively easy to use and it lets you transform XML documents into other formats, such as HTML or plain text. XSL, which you'll see more about tomorrow, is a more general language that lets you format XML in great detail.

XSLT is a specification of the W3C, and in fact it's been a recommendation since November 16, 1999. The W3C recommendation for XSLT 1.0, the current version, is at http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt. XSLT 2.0 is in the works, but it's only a working draft at this point. (There actually was an XSLT 1.1, but it was not continued after the working draft stage.) The current version of the XSLT 2.0 Working Draft is at http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20.

You use XSLT to transform XML documents, and you can reformat the documents' data as you want. You can use XSLT to transform XML into any text-based format, such as HTML, plain text, rich text format (RTF), and Microsoft Word. The most common transformation is from XML documents to HTML documents, and that's the kind of transformation you'll mainly work with today. XSLT is popular partly because by using it, you can manipulate the data in XML documents without having to write any software.

To transform XML by using XSLT, you need two documents—an XML document you want to transform and an XSLT style sheet. (Note that XSLT style sheets are also XML documents.) Let's start with an example to see how things work. Say that, as a part of a federal watchdog committee, you're in charge of maintaining data about U.S. states, such as what the state's flower is, what their population is, and so on. Listing 9.1 shows an XML document (ch09_01.xml) that does this. ch09_01.xml will be your XML document for today; as you can see, it lists several states, their population, state bird, area, and so on. Today you'll see how to use XSLT to pick data out of this document selectively.

Example 9.1. A Sample XML Document (`ch09_01.xml`)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding ="UTF-8"?>
<states>

    <state>
        <name>California</name>
        <population units="people">33871648</population><!--2000 census-->
        <capital>Sacramento</capital>
        <bird>Quail</bird>
        <flower>Golden Poppy</flower>
        <area units="square miles">155959</area>
    </state>

    <state>
        <name>Massachusetts</name>
        <population units="people">6349097</population><!--2000 census-->
        <capital>Boston</capital>
        <bird>Chickadee</bird>
        <flower>Mayflower</flower>
        <area units="square miles">7840</area>
    </state>

    <state>
        <name>New York</name>
        <population units="people">18976457</population><!--2000 census-->
        <capital>Albany</capital>
        <bird>Bluebird</bird>
        <flower>Rose</flower>
        <area units="square miles">47214</area>
    </state>

</states>

To extract some data from ch09_01.xml, you need an XSLT style sheet, like the one shown in Listing 9.2, which is called ch09_02.xsl. (XSLT style sheets usually use the extension .xsl.) This example just strips out the names of the states and places them into a basic HTML document.

Example 9.2. An XSLT Style Sheet (`ch09_02.xsl`)

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

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

    <xsl:template match="state">
        <P>
            <xsl:value-of select="name"/>
        </P>
    </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

At this point, then, you have an XML document to work with and a style sheet to transform it. How do you put the two together to actually make the transformation occur?

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