Business

Databases

Graphics

Metadata

Mobile

Programming

Schemas

Semantic Web

Style

Web

Web Services

XML Development Tools

Free Download Stylus Studio – The World's best XML Editor!

Learn XML development with Stylus Studio XML IDE

Join the XML discussion at the Stylus Studio Developer Network

 
Annotated XML
What is XML?
What is XSLT?
What is XSL-FO?
What is XLink?
What is XML Schema?
What is XQuery?
What is RDF?
What is RSS?
What are Topic Maps?
What are Web Services?
What are XForms?
XSLT Recipe of the Day

Manage Your Account
Forgot Your Password?

 
Search
Article Archive

 
<taglines/>
Dive into XML
Hacking Congress
Hacking the Library
Java Web Services Security
Jon Udell
Perl and XML
Practical XQuery
Python and XML
Rich Salz
Sacré SVG
Standards Lowdown
The Restful Web
Transforming XML
XML Q&A
XML Tourist
XML-Deviant

 
XML Resources
Buyer's Guide
Events Calendar
Standards List
Submissions List

 

Syntax Checker

Traveling to a Tech Show?

New York City Hotels Canada Hotels Dallas Hotels Houston Hotels Discount Hotels Hotels in California Discount Las Vegas Hotels Manhattan Hotels New York

XML.com supported by:

Web Directory Mortgage Refinancing

		Print
		Email article link
		Add to Project

What is XSLT?

Introduction

Now that we are successfully using XML to mark up our information according to our own vocabularies, we are taking control and responsibility for our information, instead of abdicating such control to product vendors. These vendors would rather lock our information into their proprietary schemes to keep us beholden to their solutions and technology.

But the flexibility inherent in the power given to each of us to develop our own vocabularies, and for industry associations, e-commerce consortia, and the W3C to develop their own vocabularies, presents the need to be able to transform information marked up in XML from one vocabulary to another.

Two W3C Recommendations, XSLT (the Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) and XPath (the XML Path Language), meet that need. They provide a powerful implementation of a tree-oriented transformation language for transmuting instances of XML using one vocabulary into either simple text, the legacy HTML vocabulary, or XML instances using any other vocabulary imaginable. We use the XSLT language, which itself uses XPath, to specify how an implementation of an XSLT processor is to create our desired output from our given marked-up input.

XSLT enables and empowers interoperability. This XML.com introduction strives to overview essential aspects of understanding the context in which these languages help us meet our transformation requirements, and to introduce substantive concepts and terminology to bolster the information available in the W3C Recommendation documents themselves.

Since April 1999 Crane Softwrights Ltd. has published commercial training material titled Practical Transformation Using XSLT and XPath, covering the entire scope of the W3C XSLT and XPath through working drafts and the final 1.0 recommendations. This material is delivered by Crane in instructor-led sessions and is licensed to other training organizations around the world needing to teach these exciting technologies.

Crane has rewritten the first two chapters of this material into prose. These prose-oriented chapters are published on XML.com correspondingly as two main sections. The material assumes no prior knowledge of XSLT and XPath and guides the reader through background, context, structure, concepts and introductory terminology.

Table of Contents

Related Reading Learning XSLT By Michael Fitzgerald Table of Contents Index Sample Chapter Read Online--Safari Search this book on Safari:   Only This Book All of Safari Code Fragments only