XSL Companion, The - Softcover

Neil Bradley

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0201674874 ISBN 13: 9780201674873

Publisher: Pearson Education, 2000

Synopsis

A concise, comprehensive and accessible guide to the scope, strengths and limitations of the XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) family of stylesheet standards for XML, this book explains the practical ways in which XSL can be utilized for formatting and manipulating information held in the hugely popular XML data format If you are a current or potential XML user looking for just one reference to get you up to speed on styling and manipulating your XML documents with clarity, comprehensive coverage and precision, then this book will be your essential and constant companion

About this title

Review

One of the most important technologies on the XML bandwagon is XSL, which really comprises separate XSL, XSLT, and Xpath standards. The XSL Companion provides in-depth coverage of XSL and XSLT--the core technologies behind the formatting of XML data.

This book focuses on the details of how XSLT in particular can be used to mold information on the fly. The author breaks the standard apart into digestible chapters that cover, say, "contextual formatting" and "sorting." The content is fast moving and demands a technical reader who is comfortable with complexity. Those who are new to XML technologies should pick up a general tutorial prior to tackling this book.

Along with text explanations of all of the magic that XSLT and XSL can do, the author uses code snippets and numerous graphical diagrams to illustrate information processing, layout, and tree navigation. These visual elements add much to the explanation of what otherwise would be abstract concepts indeed.

The author addresses head-on the fact that much of XSLT's job today is to turn XML data into HTML-formatted documents that are compatible with the current batch of browsers. There is plenty of focus in this book on how that is done, but the chief purpose remains the exploration of the powerful transformation and formatting features that the XSL standards provide. --Stephen W. Plain

From the Inside Flap

This book covers a family of standards developed by W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium). These standards emerged out of a proposal for a stylesheet language, submitted in 1997, which was to be called 'XSL' (eXtensible Stylesheet Language). However, during its gestation, this proposal was eventually pulled apart into three separate standards. The first of these, XPath, defines a mechanism for locating information in XML documents, and it has many other uses beyond its role in formatting documents. The second, XSLT, provides a means for transforming XML documents into other data formats, including (but not limited to) formatting languages. Finally, the term 'XSL' is now properly used only to name a proposed standard for embedding formatting information in documents using XML elements.

These three standards are still related. Together, they provide a means to format XML documents. The XSLT standard includes XPath constructs in a number of places, and XSLT can be used to convert an XML document into an XSL document. But each can be used alone, or with alternative technologies. As the XSL formatting language is less mature than XSLT, and not yet well supported, it is recognised that XSLT will initially be used primarily to convert XML documents into HTML documents, possibly enhanced with CSS styling instructions. Both these formats are therefore explained in depth. However, the first half of this book concentrates on using XSLT as a general tool for processing XML, and the way that it uses XPath to find and manipulate components of an XML document.

0201674874P04062001

Edition details

• Publisher: Pearson Education
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0201674874
• ISBN 13: 9780201674873
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336