XSLT and XPATH A Guide to XML Transformations

Book Title: XSLT and XPATH: A Guide to XML Transformations Author: John Robert Gardner, Zarella L. Rendon Publisher: Prentice Hall PTR Year: 2001

Table of content

• Chapter 1 - Anatomy of an XSLT Stylesheet
• Chapter 2 - Fundamental Concepts of XSLT Stylesheets
• Chapter 3 - Advanced Stylesheet Concepts
• Chapter 4 - XPath Expressions
• Chapter 5 - XPath Functions
• Chapter 6 - Building New XML Documents with XSLT
• Chapter 7 - Using Multiple Stylesheets
• Chapter 8 - Working with Variables
• Chapter 9 - Duplication, Iteration, and Conditional XSLT Elements
• Chapter 10 - Controlling Output Options
• Chapter 11 - XSLT Functions and Related XSLT Elements
• Chapter 12 - XSLT Processors, Extensions, and Java
• Chapter 13 - Xalan, Saxon, and XT
• Appendix A - Case Studies
• Appendix B - Grouping Using the Muenchian Method
• Appendix C - Using XSLT for the Artificial Intelligence “N-Queens” Problem

Description

There are many things you can use to process content once it is marked up using XML. However, we have chosen to talk about the only standard application that allows you to do many different things with it. With XSLT, you can add style to XML, convert it to other XML, or simply chop it up and regenerate it in a different form.

XSLT is the power behind the throne of XML. It assures that every level of every piece of XML data is accessible and reusable across platforms and forward in time. It is not an exaggeration to say that XSLT and its companion XPath are the very glue and mortar that hold together and build the endlessly varying applications of markup data for any industry, academy, or individual. XSLT is the fastest cure for the fear of having obsolescence in a data or information architecture design.

This book is for anyone who works with electronic data and wants to enable XML transformations without a difficult programming language learning curve. If you are comfortable working with SGML, XML, or even HTML, you will benefit greatly from the common markup syntax.

Some people may find XSLT difficult because it is not a procedural programming language. Most programming languages have a very structured, concise syntax. The syntax of XSLT is XML and is designed to be human readable and easily understandable.

You must have some knowledge of markup before using XSLT.

Some people may find XSLT difficult to use because it does not provide solutions to every transformation situation. For example, you cannot use XSLT to convert text to XML. There are situations when additional processing may be required.

However, for most of your day-to-day XML transformations, XSLT is the tool of choice.