 | Level: Intermediate Chuck White (chuck@tumeric.net), XSLT consultant and Web engineer, Consultant
16 Mar 2004 In this third tutorial in a multi-part series on the benefits of using XSLT, the MindMap Team discovers the need to perform some analyses that require procedural techniques. Because XSLT is not a procedural language, this tutorial explains how to layer and use chain transformations to get around some of the limitations this structure provides. The tutorial demonstrates how to use named templates to mimic side effects, and how external documents are layered together to interoperate.
Prerequisites
This tutorial is for developers who want to discover processes for making XSLT act more like a procedural programming language. This tutorial explains how to layer and use chain transformations to get around some of the limitations of this structure. Author Chuck White demonstrates how to use named templates to mimic side effects, and how external documents are layered together to interoperate. You should have a basic understanding of XSLT and XML before you take this tutorial. Other tutorials in this series are:
System requirements
You will need JavaScript enabled in your browser. Install and test the following tools before beginning the tutorial:
- Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.asp).
- Download the files referred throughout this tutorial in file x-layerfiles.zip. You should download them before starting the tutorial so that you can follow along more easily.
Generally, when passing parameters to and from XSLT stylesheets, you pass to and from a server-side environment, such as a J2EE environment or some other Web application server. To reach the broadest audience, this tutorial uses Internet Explorer as the application server so you can focus on the concept of passing parameters. This means that if you're using a Linux or Unix box, you'll have a hard time running the examples unless you can port it to your application server. This would require some knowledge of how your Web application server manages the Document Object Model (DOM) and is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but the concepts presented here are certainly portable to any server environment.
Duration
Under one hour
Formats html, pdf
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