unit 3 — advanced internet technologies lesson 11 — introduction to xsl
TRANSCRIPT
Unit 3 — Advanced Internet Technologies
Lesson 11 — Introduction to XSL
Advanced Internet Technologies 2
Objectives
Create simple XML/XSL Web Pages. Understand what an Xpath is and how to use
it. Use the <xsl:value-of> tag to extract and
display XML data. Use the <xsl:attribute> tag to make Web
content dynamic.
Advanced Internet Technologies 3
Objectives (cont.)
Use the <xsl:for-each> tag to display XML data repetitively.
Use the <xsl:if> tag for conditional XML data processing.
Advanced Internet Technologies 4
XSL Basics
XSL stands for XML Stylesheet Language. XSL was designed to be a companion
technology to XML.
Advanced Internet Technologies 5
Hello World—Again
XSL documents are called stylesheets. The purpose of XSL stylesheets is to define
how XML data should be displayed in a Web browser.
Advanced Internet Technologies 6
Hello World—Again (cont.)
The XSL stylesheet for a particular XML document is identified by an XML directive tag.
<?xml-stylesheet type=“text/xsl” href=“[URL]”?>
Advanced Internet Technologies 7
Hello World—Again (cont.)
All XSL stylesheets must include an <xsl:stylesheet> tag and an <xsl:template> tag.
The <xsl:stylesheet> tag identifies the XML namespace to use.
The <xsl:template> tag identifies the root node of the corresponding XML document.
Advanced Internet Technologies 8
XSL Transformations
Combining an XML document with an XSL stylesheet is called transforming it.
The resulting Web page is called an XML Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT).
The <xsl:value-of> tag extracts a data value from an XML file and displays it.
Advanced Internet Technologies 9
Understanding Xpaths
An Xpath is a notational convention used to identify a particular data element in an XML document.
Xpaths can be absolute or relative.
Advanced Internet Technologies 10
Text Strings in XSL
Placing arbitrary text strings in XSL stylesheets can cause syntax errors.
Static text strings should be enclosed within <xsl:text> and </xsl:text> tags.
<xsl:text>Hello XSL World!</xsl:text>
Advanced Internet Technologies 11
XSL Tag Attributes
Static XSL tag attributes must follow the same syntax rules as XML and XHTML tag attributes.
XSL allows tag attributes to be added dynamically with the <xsl:attribute> tag.
Dynamic attribute values can be extracted and set with the <xsl:value-of> tag.
Advanced Internet Technologies 12
XSL Conditional Tags
All programming languages include “if” statements.
XSL supports conditional processing with the <xsl:if> tag.
The condition is specified in the test attribute of the <xsl:if> tag.
<xsl:if> tags can determine whether a particular XML data element is present or not.
Advanced Internet Technologies 13
Summary
You created simple XML/XSL Web pages. You understand what an Xpath is and how to
use it. You used the <xsl:value-of> tag to extract and
display XML data. You used the <xsl:attribute> tag to make Web
content dynamic.
Advanced Internet Technologies 14
Summary (cont.)
You used the <xsl:for-each> tag to display XML data repetitively.
You used the <xsl:if> tag for conditional XML data processing.