- Sams Teach Yourself XML in 21 Days, Third Edition
- Table of Contents
- About the Author
- Acknowledgments
- We Want to Hear from You!
- Introduction
- Part I: At a Glance
- Day 1. Welcome to XML
- All About Markup Languages
- All About XML
- Looking at XML in a Browser
- Working with XML Data Yourself
- Structuring Your Data
- Creating Well-Formed XML Documents
- Creating Valid XML Documents
- How XML Is Used in the Real World
- Online XML Resources
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 2. Creating XML Documents
- Choosing an XML Editor
- Using XML Browsers
- Using XML Validators
- Creating XML Documents Piece by Piece
- Creating Prologs
- Creating an XML Declaration
- Creating XML Comments
- Creating Processing Instructions
- Creating Tags and Elements
- Creating CDATA Sections
- Handling Entities
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 3. Creating Well-Formed XML Documents
- What Makes an XML Document Well-Formed?
- Creating an Example XML Document
- Understanding the Well-Formedness Constraints
- Using XML Namespaces
- Understanding XML Infosets
- Understanding Canonical XML
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 4. Creating Valid XML Documents: DTDs
- All About DTDs
- Validating a Document by Using a DTD
- Creating Element Content Models
- Commenting a DTD
- Supporting External DTDs
- Handling Namespaces in DTDs
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Declaring Attributes in DTDs
- Day 5. Handling Attributes and Entities in DTDs
- Specifying Default Values
- Specifying Attribute Types
- Handling Entities
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 6. Creating Valid XML Documents: XML Schemas
- Using XML Schema Tools
- Creating XML Schemas
- Dissecting an XML Schema
- The Built-in XML Schema Elements
- Creating Elements and Types
- Specifying a Number of Elements
- Specifying Element Default Values
- Creating Attributes
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 7. Creating Types in XML Schemas
- Restricting Simple Types by Using XML Schema Facets
- Creating XML Schema Choices
- Using Anonymous Type Definitions
- Declaring Empty Elements
- Declaring Mixed-Content Elements
- Grouping Elements Together
- Grouping Attributes Together
- Declaring all Groups
- Handling Namespaces in Schemas
- Annotating an XML Schema
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Part I. In Review
- Well-Formed Documents
- Valid Documents
- Part II: At a Glance
- Day 8. Formatting XML by Using Cascading Style Sheets
- Our Sample XML Document
- Introducing CSS
- Connecting CSS Style Sheets and XML Documents
- Creating Style Sheet Selectors
- Using Inline Styles
- Creating Style Rule Specifications in Style Sheets
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 9. Formatting XML by Using XSLT
- Introducing XSLT
- Transforming XML by Using XSLT
- Writing XSLT Style Sheets
- Using <xsl:apply-templates>
- Using <xsl:value-of> and <xsl:for-each>
- Matching Nodes by Using the match Attribute
- Working with the select Attribute and XPath
- Using <xsl:copy>
- Using <xsl:if>
- Using <xsl:choose>
- Specifying the Output Document Type
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 10. Working with XSL Formatting Objects
- Introducing XSL-FO
- Using XSL-FO
- Using XSL Formatting Objects and Properties
- Building an XSL-FO Document
- Handling Inline Formatting
- Formatting Lists
- Formatting Tables
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Part II. In Review
- Using CSS
- Using XSLT
- Using XSL-FO
- Part III: At a Glance
- Day 11. Extending HTML with XHTML
- Why XHTML?
- Writing XHTML Documents
- Validating XHTML Documents
- The Basic XHTML Elements
- Organizing Text
- Formatting Text
- Selecting Fonts: <font>
- Comments: <!-->
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 12. Putting XHTML to Work
- Creating Hyperlinks: <a>
- Linking to Other Documents: <link>
- Handling Images: <img>
- Creating Frame Documents: <frameset>
- Creating Frames: <frame>
- Creating Embedded Style Sheets: <style>
- Formatting Tables: <table>
- Creating Table Rows: <tr>
- Formatting Table Headers: <th>
- Formatting Table Data: <td>
- Extending XHTML
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 13. Creating Graphics and Multimedia: SVG and SMIL
- Introducing SVG
- Creating an SVG Document
- Creating Rectangles
- Adobe's SVG Viewer
- Using CSS Styles
- Creating Circles
- Creating Ellipses
- Creating Lines
- Creating Polylines
- Creating Polygons
- Creating Text
- Creating Gradients
- Creating Paths
- Creating Text Paths
- Creating Groups and Transformations
- Creating Animation
- Creating Links
- Creating Scripts
- Embedding SVG in HTML
- Introducing SMIL
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 14. Handling XLinks, XPointers, and XForms
- Introducing XLinks
- Beyond Simple XLinks
- Introducing XPointers
- Introducing XBase
- Introducing XForms
- Summary
- Workshop
- Part III. In Review
- Part IV: At a Glance
- Day 15. Using JavaScript and XML
- Introducing the W3C DOM
- Introducing the DOM Objects
- Working with the XML DOM in JavaScript
- Searching for Elements by Name
- Reading Attribute Values
- Getting All XML Data from a Document
- Validating XML Documents by Using DTDs
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 16. Using Java and .NET: DOM
- Using Java to Read XML Data
- Finding Elements by Name
- Creating an XML Browser by Using Java
- Navigating Through XML Documents
- Writing XML by Using Java
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 17. Using Java and .NET: SAX
- An Overview of SAX
- Using SAX
- Using SAX to Find Elements by Name
- Creating an XML Browser by Using Java and SAX
- Navigating Through XML Documents by Using SAX
- Writing XML by Using Java and SAX
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 18. Working with SOAP and RDF
- Introducing SOAP
- A SOAP Example in .NET
- A SOAP Example in Java
- Introducing RDF
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Part IV. In Review
- Part V: At a Glance
- Day 19. Handling XML Data Binding
- Introducing DSOs
- Binding HTML Elements to HTML Data
- Binding HTML Elements to XML Data
- Binding HTML Tables to XML Data
- Accessing Individual Data Fields
- Binding HTML Elements to XML Data by Using the XML DSO
- Binding HTML Tables to XML Data by Using the XML DSO
- Searching XML Data by Using a DSO and JavaScript
- Handling Hierarchical XML Data
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 20. Working with XML and Databases
- XML, Databases, and ASP
- Storing Databases as XML
- Using XPath with a Database
- Introducing XQuery
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Day 21. Handling XML in .NET
- Creating and Editing an XML Document in .NET
- From XML to Databases and Back
- Reading and Writing XML in .NET Code
- Using XML Controls to Display Formatted XML
- Creating XML Web Services
- Summary
- Q&A
- Workshop
- Part V. In Review
- Appendix A. Quiz Answers
- Quiz Answers for Day 1
- Quiz Answers for Day 2
- Quiz Answers for Day 3
- Quiz Answers for Day 4
- Quiz Answers for Day 5
- Quiz Answers for Day 6
- Quiz Answers for Day 7
- Quiz Answers for Day 8
- Quiz Answers for Day 9
- Quiz Answers for Day 10
- Quiz Answers for Day 11
- Quiz Answers for Day 12
- Quiz Answers for Day 13
- Quiz Answers for Day 14
- Quiz Answers for Day 15
- Quiz Answers for Day 16
- Quiz Answers for Day 17
- Quiz Answers for Day 18
- Quiz Answers for Day 19
- Quiz Answers for Day 20
- Quiz Answers for Day 21
Recommended Book
Recommended Book
Recommended Book
Transforming XML by Using XSLT
There are three different places where XSLT transformations can happen:
- In the server— A server program, such as a .NET or JavaServer Pages (JSP) program, can use XSLT to transform an XML document and send it to the client program (such as a browser).
- In the client— A client program, such as an HTML browser, can perform XSLT transformations. For example, Internet Explorer fully supports XSLT 1.0 support.
- With a separate program— You can use one of the many standalone programs available to perform XSLT transformations.
The following sections look briefly at these possibilities.
Server-Side XSLT
There are various ways to handle XSLT on Web servers. One of the most popular is to use JSP because Java versions 1.4 and later include complete XSLT 1.0 support. To see how this works, you don't have to write any JSP—it's already been done for you in an example written to work with the Tomcat JSP server in ch09_03.jsp, which is shown in Listing 9.3. (Note that you don't have to know any JSP in this book.) Figure 9.1 shows this transformation —which uses the style sheet ch09_02.xsl to strip the names of the states out of ch09_01.xml—using ch09_03.jsp and the Tomcat Web server. If you use this method, people who want to look at the results of your XSLT transformations don't have to do anything special—it's all been done for them on the server.
Example 9.3. A JSP Page (ch09_03.jsp)
<%@ page import="javax.xml.transform.*, javax.xml.transform.stream.*,
java.io.*" %>
<%
try
{
TransformerFactory transformerfactory =
TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer transformer = transformerfactory.newTransformer
(new StreamSource(new File
(application.getRealPath("/") + "ch09_02.xsl")));
transformer.transform(new StreamSource(new File(application.getRealPath
("/") + "ch09_01.xml")),
new StreamResult(new File(application.getRealPath("/") +
"result.html")));
}
catch(Exception e) {}
FileReader filereader = new FileReader(application.getRealPath("/") +
"result.html");
BufferedReader bufferedreader = new BufferedReader(filereader);
String textString;
while((textString = bufferedreader.readLine()) != null) {
%>
<%= textString %>
<%
}
filereader.close();
%>
)
Figure 9.1 Using XSLT and JSP in the server.
What's actually happened here is that the names of the states were stripped out and placed into an HTML document, which looks like this (the indentation, which doesn't matter to Web browsers, has been cleaned up here):
<HTML>
<BODY>
<P>California</P>
<P>Massachusetts</P>
<P>New York</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>
However, server-side programming is not something most XML authors are conversant in. There are other options as well—including using Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, as described in the following section.
Client-Side XSLT
Internet Explorer (but not, unfortunately, Netscape Navigator), lets you perform XSLT 1.0 transformations. All you have to do is connect the XSLT style sheet to the XML document by using an <?xml-stylesheet?> processing instruction, like this:
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="ch09_02.xsl"?>
Note that some other XSLT processors require type="text/xml" rather than type="text/xsl". Listing 9.4 shows the Internet Explorer–enabled version of the XML document in ch09_04.xml, where you can see the <?xml-stylesheet?> processing instruction at work.
Example 9.4. An XML Document (ch09_04.xml)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding ="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="ch09_02.xsl"?>
<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>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>
Figure 9.2 shows Listing 9.4 in Internet Explorer. Note that these results are just like the results shown in Figure 9.1, when using JSP on the server (except for the URL in the title bar, of course). In this case, however, you're using Internet Explorer itself to perform client-side transformations. This is probably the most accessible way to perform XSLT transformations for most people.
)
Figure 9.2 Using XSLT in the client.
Besides using server-side and client-side XSLT transformations, you can also transform XML by using XSLT with standalone programs.
Standalone Programs and XSLT
Some programs perform XSLT transformations for you. There's a great deal of XSLT support built in to the Java programming language, versions 1.4 and later, so many of the transformation programs use Java. Because I don't expect you to work with Java at this point, I've provided an already written Java example in ch09_05.java, which is shown in Listing 9.5, in the downloadable code for this book, along with the compiled Java class file, ch09_05.class. If you have Java installed (it's available for free at http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/download.html, as you'll discuss on Day 16, "Using Java and .NET: DOM"), you can transform ch09_01.xml by using ch09_02.xsl and place the result into a file named formatted.html, like this:
%java ch09_05 ch09_01.xml ch09_02.xsl formatted.html
Example 9.5. A Java Program (ch09_05.java)
import java.io.*;
import javax.xml.transform.*;
import javax.xml.transform.stream.*;
public class ch09_05
{
public static void main(String args[])
{
try
{
TransformerFactory tf = TransformerFactory.newInstance();
Transformer tr = tf.newTransformer(new StreamSource
(new File(args[1])));
tr.transform(new StreamSource(new File(args[0])),
new StreamResult(new File(args[2])));
}
catch(Exception ex) {}
}
}
formatted.html looks just like the document Internet Explorer created for you in the preceding section:
<HTML>
<BODY>
<P>California</P>
<P>Massachusetts</P>
<P>New York</P>
</BODY>
</HTML>