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Index of XML standards
The world of XML is vast and growing, with a huge variety of standards and technologies that interact in complex ways. It can be difficult for beginners to navigate the most important aspects of XML, and for users to keep track of new entries and changes in the space. XML is a basic syntax upon which you develop local and global vocabularies. This index provides a detailed cross-reference of many XML standards, including links to additional coverage for each.
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19 Nov 2009 |
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Enforce basic document structure with XML constraint checking
The ability to specify, check and act upon constraints is vital to
ensuring the overall quality of healthcare information. The Health Level 7
(HL7) Clinical Document Architecture (CDA), described through XML Schema,
allows the specification of constraints through HL7 Templates, which can be
implemented in Schematron. Schematron can be applied through XSLT. This article illustrates software and
hardware solutions for constraint checking in the HL7 CDA. The two
solutions are demonstrated in an SOA that
includes both successful and failing XML Schema and Schematron constraint
checks. The article evaluates the application of constraints in the HL7 CDA
and identifies some categories of constraints that require further investigation.
The outcome of this evaluation shows that the ability to specify, check, and act
upon constraints through Schematron complements XML Schema processing. The two
constraint approaches are very useful and practical, and should therefore be
pursued further.
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Articles |
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15 Sep 2009 |
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Generate PDFs with XStream and XSL-FO
Discover how to leverage XML serialization and XSL-FO to generate dynamic PDF
documents from Java(TM) business objects. Through XSL-FO stylesheets, you can separate the
presentation (view) of data from the data and Java code, allowing for modifications to PDF
format and layout without changes to the Java code.
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Articles |
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01 Sep 2009 |
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Avoid common XSLT mistakes
Inexperienced XML and XSLT developers often exhibit bad habits that can cause critical flaws in XSLT code. In this article, get a feel for the typical problems that come up in stylesheets and how to remedy them.
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Articles |
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19 Dec 2008 |
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XSLT as a language compiler
Explore the concept of XSLT as a programming language compiler, specifically as you create an XML facade in front of PostScript, to produce PostScript files from XML documents. This article introduces the concept of a stylesheet as an implicit language definition, the basics of PostScript, and the layers of abstraction involved in creating an XML-to-PostScript compiler.
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Articles |
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09 Dec 2008 |
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Create a framework to support XSLT transformation pipelines
Explore the creation of a framework, called Butterfly, that runs in PHP 5 and
facilitates the applications of chains of XSLT stylesheets to XML source documents.
This provides transparent caching of the transformed results. Inspired by the Java(TM)-based Apache Cocoon project, so named because it houses and manages the transformation of data from one form to another (turning caterpillars into butterflies), this much lighter-weight framework is named Butterfly. With the Butterfly framework, you can set up an XML configuration file to define chains of stylesheet transformations, and then instantiate Butterfly objects that can each produce the result of an XSLT transformation chain. This article will also look at the nature of framework design in general as it sketches out this framework in particular.
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18 Nov 2008 |
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Thinking XML: Enrich Schema definitions with SKOS
The things in schemata (people, places and things) are inextricably tied to how people describe them, and this is the key to alignment of business with technology. One of the most important things an XML schema designer can do is express this connection clearly. SKOS, a language well known as a component of DITA, is a very useful means for such expression. Learn how to enrich schema definitions with SKOS definitions.
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Articles |
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11 Nov 2008 |
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Customize a Google Maps result page with Google Mapplets
A Google Mapplet is an application that runs inside a Google Maps results
page and lets you add your own custom information and behavior to the page and the
map. In this tutorial, you will write a Google Mapplet that uses the Yahoo
Weather RSS feed to display the local weather in Google Maps. To demonstrate
different techniques while using the Google Mapplets API, you'll implement two solutions. The first is on the client side and uses RSS and JavaScript. The second is on the server side and uses XSLT, PHP, KML, and JavaScript.
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Tutorials |
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21 Oct 2008 |
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Create a Yahoo! SearchMonkey application
SearchMonkey is one of the first attempts from a major search engine to make
use of Semantic Web technologies to enhance search results. In this tutorial, you
will implement a Yahoo! SearchMonkey application that enhances blogger.com search
listings to include other information about the blog and blog owner. You will
first implement a basic application using the default data available from Yahoo!.
Then you will create a custom data service to provide your own structured data to
SearchMonkey before you develop a more advanced application that takes advantage of this new custom data service.
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Tutorials |
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14 Oct 2008 |
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Separate content from presentation with XSLT, SimpleXML, and PHP 5
Over the years, developers have devised many strategies and frameworks to
facilitate the separation of business logic and presentation logic. In this
tutorial, you will explore two solutions to separating data and business logic
from presentation logic: one using XSLT through the XSL module in PHP 5 and the
other using the SimpleXML module in PHP 5. To do this, you'll use a Web page for a personal resume stored as an XML file as an example.
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Tutorials |
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07 Oct 2008 |
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Overlay data on maps using XSLT, KML, and the Google Maps API, Part 2: Transform and use the data
In this two-part article series, you'll develop an application for a real
estate brokerage to display all available apartment listings as clickable
Placemarks on Google Maps. In Part 1, you created the first half of the
application that collects the apartment listing information from the user, uses
the Google Geocoder Web service to turn the street address into its geographical
coordinates (longitude and latitude), and stores the coordinates in the database
along with the address information. In Part 2, you will use this data to produce a
KML overlay document and display it in Google Maps and Google Earth. First, you'll use stored procedures to produce XML from MySQL. Then with XSLT and a technique called Muenchian grouping, you'll transform the XML data into a KML document containing the overlay information -- one Placemark for each apartment building. The pop-up balloon for each Placemark displays the available apartment listings in that building. Finally, you'll use the Google Maps API to display the KML overlay in a Google Map embedded within your own Web site.
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Articles |
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09 Sep 2008 |
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Process instance data using schema information
In this article, you meet a function library implemented in pure XSLT that
enables applications to take advantage of XPath 2 schema-related node tests which are
only available in schema-aware processors. You will also see how to decouple the
validation process from the instance data processing. You can use the XSLT function
library with any basic XSLT 2 processor to employ the schema information to process
instance data -- and apply the same approach equally to XQuery applications, too.
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Articles |
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19 Aug 2008 |
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Transform Data Web Services messages using XSLT in IBM Data Studio Developer
Apply XSL transformations to input and output messages of Data Web Services to enable a variety of clients.
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Tutorials |
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31 Jul 2008 |
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Thinking XML: Firefox 3.0 and XML
Mozilla continues to improve its flagship browser and the latest major release,
Firefox 3.0, offers something for just about everyone. XML developers were certainly
not left out -- the new version improves basic parsing, DOM, XSLT, SVG, and more. In this article, learn of the new features Firefox 3.0 offers for XML processing; pay close attention to how the added EXSLT extensions open up fresh possibilities for XSLT on the browser.
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Articles |
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29 Jul 2008 |
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Schema-aware processing with XSLT 2.0
With the release of version 2.0, XSLT now allows you to design your stylesheets to
be schema-aware. A schema-aware XSLT system offers many benefits, including the
ability to validate input trees prior to the XSLT transformation to ensure that the
XSLT stylesheet only processes valid input, as well as the ability to validate output trees to ensure that the XSLT transformation is producing the valid XML output. You are also able to specify data types for variables, for input parameters for user-defined functions and templates, and for return values from the functions. In this article, learn more about the concept of schema-aware facilities and follow some examples that illustrate the benefits.
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Articles |
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15 May 2008 |
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Internationalize your apps with XSLT
To meet the needs of users worldwide, today's Web applications often require
internationalization. In this article, you'll see an approach for client-side internationalization based on XSLT. This solution only requires that both the data to be internationalized and the server stores are in XML.
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Articles |
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06 May 2008 |
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XML processing in Ajax, Part 3: JSON and avoiding proxies
Ajax-style server calls don't necessarily require XMLHttp requests. This last installment of the series uses a public Web service, JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), and dynamic script tags in a final approach to the weather badge project.
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Articles |
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18 Mar 2008 |
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XML processing in Ajax, Part 2: Two Ajax and XSLT approaches
In Part 2 of this series, Mark Pruett presents two more approaches to the
Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) weather badge. Both approaches use Extensible
Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) transformations -- one on the server side and the other in the browser.
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Articles |
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11 Mar 2008 |
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Top ten XML articles and tutorials - March 2008
See what XML content your peers found most valuable last
month
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07 Mar 2008 |
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Top ten XML articles and tutorials - January 2008
See what XML content your peers found most valuable last
month
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07 Mar 2008 |
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XML processing in Ajax, Part 1: Four approaches
Any programming problem can be solved in multiple right ways. This series looks at four approaches for creating
an Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) weather badge, a small reusable widget that's
easily embedded on any Web page. This first article lays the foundation and examines the
first approach -- walking the DOM tree.
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Articles |
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04 Mar 2008 |
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Aggregate RSS and Atom information using XQuery
XQuery makes it much easier to merge and filter information from XML documents
when you embed the filtering instructions right into the document that you use to
generate the output format. You can use that functionality to aggregate information
from RSS and Atom feeds into the format you need. In this article, look at the
structure of the RSS and Atom formats and how XQuery can simplify the display of that information.
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Articles |
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05 Feb 2008 |
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Create dynamic Firefox user interfaces
When you create browser-based applications that display XML data feeds, you
often need to code the data-retrieval mechanism and the user interface. Mozilla
Firefox provides an infrastructure that frees you from these tasks, so you can concentrate on your application's functionality. Learn how to use Asynchronous JavaScript + XML (Ajax) to download XML data from a Web server, and discover how you can use Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) to transform it dynamically into Firefox user-interface elements expressed in XML User Interface Language (XUL). You can apply these techniques to any application that uses XML data sources.
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Tutorials |
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15 Jan 2008 |
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Expand the editing capabilities of OpenOffice with XSLT
You might know that you can pull XML data into OpenOffice's spreadsheet program, Calc, but did you know that you can create a filter to make word-processing documents out of data stored as XML? This tutorial shows you how to use OpenOffice's import/export filters to open your XML data as though it's just a plain document. From there, users can edit the document much more naturally and then save it back to its native format. You can also use this feature to easily turn your documents into XML data.
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Tutorials |
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11 Jan 2008 |
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Top ten XML articles and tutorials - December 2007
Explore the XML content that your fellow readers recently focused on.
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07 Jan 2008 |
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Push RSS to new limits
This tutorial presents an innovative use of the well-known Really Simple
Syndication (RSS) format's associative properties to emulate the functionality of a
simple relational database. It demonstrates using RSS channels to store contact
information and meeting information -- much as a personal address book and calendar
does. It uses RSS elements and attributes such as items and guids to create a neural-network-like mesh of related data.
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Tutorials |
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18 Dec 2007 |
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Top ten XML articles and tutorials - November 2007
Explore the XML content that your fellow readers recently focused on.
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11 Dec 2007 |
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Use custom collations in XSLT 2.0
One emphasis of XSLT 2.0 is better support for internationalization, especially to sort and compare text. This article demonstrates how to write a custom collation function and invoke it from an XSLT 2.0 stylesheet.
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Articles |
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27 Nov 2007 |
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Use an XForms document as a custom XML editor
In a recent article we looked at XSLT 2.0 functions to convert an XML bracket to an HTML page that displayed the results of a fictional tournament. In this article, we revisit that XML document type to create an attractive editor that fills in the bracket. The result is a custom editor for a specific XML document type.
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Articles |
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06 Nov 2007 |
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Top ten XML articles and tutorials - September 2007
Explore the XML content that your fellow readers recently focused on.
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12 Oct 2007 |
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Write XForms that work across browsers
Learn how XHTML and XForms documents should be
hosted and written to ensure that your end users have the best experience with
your XForms-based applications.
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Articles |
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02 Oct 2007 |
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Save time and code with XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0
Three interesting new features in XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 are the item data
type, the to operator, and the concept of sequences. Build a sample application that
uses these features to generate a sophisticated HTML view of an XML document, and
with the new features in XSLT 2.0, allow you to create shorter stylesheets that are easier to maintain. Along the way, spend a bit of time on data typing in XSLT 2.0, and learn to use the new xsl:function element.
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Articles |
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04 Sep 2007 |
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Voice enabling XML, Part 2: Develop a voice-enabled calendar
In this second article of a four-part series, you learn to develop a
voice-enabled calendar. Save the data of the calendar as XML; then to modify
calendar entries, have the application read VoiceXML that contains your specified
commands. The calendar can also output VoiceXML to speak your daily tasks back to you.
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Articles |
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04 Sep 2007 |
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Voice enabling XML, Part 1: Develop a voice-enabled RSS reader
RSS is a hot topic these days, as it provides an easy way to stream data online. This article, the first of a four-part series on developing VoiceXML applications, shows you how to develop a voice-enabled RSS reader. The input to the application is RSS data, and the output is VoiceXML that can be read and spoken by your favorite compatible voice application.
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Articles |
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21 Aug 2007 |
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Generating XForms applications using the National Information Exchange Model (NIEM)
This article demonstrates how XForms applications can be automatically created from a National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) constraint schema, and shows how graphical tools can allow non-programmers to automatically create rich Web applications using a model-driven approach. It gives an example of how a short XML transformation (XSLT) is used to achieve this task and how the transformation can be modified and extended by developers.
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Articles |
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21 Aug 2007 |
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XForms extensions to XPath
XForms uses XML Path Language (XPath) as its basic function and evaluation language.
This is the same XPath used in Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT). In addition to familiar functions like
count and substring, XForms
introduces a number of useful extension functions to XPath for numeric, date, and XForms-specific operations including if, avg,
min, max, now, days-from-date, month, and instance.
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Articles |
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07 Aug 2007 |
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Planning to upgrade XSLT 1.0 to 2.0, Part 7: Selection of XSLT 2.0 features and the 1.0 shortcomings they address
XSLT 2.0 introduces numerous new features, some of which are specifically designed to address XSLT 1.0
shortcomings. This article is an extension of the first article in the series, "Improvements in XSLT," which presented some of the most highly desirable XSLT 2.0 features. This article presents
other enhancements in XSLT 2.0 in the areas of data organization, expansion in XPath
expression syntax, parameter passing across templates, and string processing. You'll find
examples for common applications of pure 1.0 syntax versus the replacement of the much
simpler and more versatile 2.0 syntax. For concepts that are entirely new to XSLT 2.0,
such as sequences and collations, this article shows how the concept might be useful for your existing XML transformation applications.
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Articles |
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03 Jul 2007 |
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Understanding XForms
With XML-based technologies such as XForms, XQuery, and XSLT, it is possible to create complex multi-user applications, from interactive help systems to custom "game" applications in which multiple users can interact with at once.
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Articles |
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05 Jun 2007 |
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Report Data Analyzer: Interpret EWLM performance data
As a workload manager (and not a capacity planning tool), the IBM Enterprise
Workload Manager focuses on real-time data and, thus, only retains performance data
covering the past 24 hours. There was a customer requirement, however, to have this data
available for later analysis. And so, the Data Hardening plug-in was added. This plug-in
allows on-the-fly dumping of performance data onto the file system. But, the
dumped data can't be directly exploited: Enter EWLM Report Data Analyzer.
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Articles |
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15 May 2007 |
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Get started with XML on alphaWorks
You want to start developing with XML, and you've heard the buzzwords -- XForms, XSLT, and various other acronyms that begin with an X. So where do you begin? This primer will help you explore areas within XML and XML-related technologies, and introduce you to the numerous categories of emerging technologies that are available for free trial download from alphaWorks, the premier destination for free IBM alpha code downloads.
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Articles |
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10 May 2007 |
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Planning to upgrade XSLT 1.0 to 2.0, Part 6: How to mix XSLT versions for a 2.0 processor
XSLT 1.0 anticipated future versions and made some provisions for them, but the advent of XSLT 2.0 really puts the compatibility features into practice. One feature that was greatly expanded from the original idea is the ability to set the XSLT version on every stylesheet element. This installment provides in-depth coverage of how you can apply Backwards Compatibility around those portions of your legacy code where an immediate upgrade is not feasible. It describes the 1.0-to-2.0 incompatibilities that local versioning will overcome (or not).
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Articles |
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17 Apr 2007 |
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Top ten XML articles and tutorials - January 2007
Explore the XML content that your fellow readers recently focused on.
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14 Mar 2007 |
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Top ten XML articles and tutorials - February 2007
Explore the XML content that your fellow readers recently focused on.
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14 Mar 2007 |
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XML for PHP developers, Part 3: Advanced techniques to read, manipulate, and write XML
This final article in a three-part series discusses more techniques for reading, manipulating, and writing XML in PHP5. In it, you will focus on the now familiar APIs DOM and SimpleXML in more sophisticated surroundings, and, for the first time in this three-part series, on the XSL extension.
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Articles |
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13 Mar 2007 |
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Planning to upgrade XSLT 1.0 to 2.0, Part 5: Make your stylesheets work with any processor version
This article provides examples of stylesheets that are portable between versions 1.0 and 2.0, with special guidance for those who must run both 1.0 and 2.0 processors for a long transition period. The new 2.0 features might occur in the form of instruction elements, declaration elements, XPath operators, functions, or new attributes or children on elements that existed in 1.0. For each form of enhancement, only certain techniques apply.
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Articles |
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27 Feb 2007 |
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Planning to upgrade XSLT 1.0 to 2.0, Part 4: The toolkit for XSLT portability
If you are concerned with the adoption of XSLT 2.0 and what will happen to your legacy stylesheet code, this is the article you need. It focuses on those features of 2.0 that address cross-version compatibility with 1.0. It explains how 1.0 and 2.0 processors recognize XSLT instructions and the vendor's implementation-specific instructions (if any), distinguishing them from elements that should not be directives to the processor. The article includes a survey of all portability tools such as fallback, function availability tests, and the new use-when attribute.
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Articles |
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20 Feb 2007 |
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Ten predictions for XML in 2007
2006 was a quiet year for XML. Will 2007 be more exciting? Elliotte Rusty Harold predicts it will be.
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Articles |
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13 Feb 2007 |
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Introduction to XSLT
The need to transform XML is so common that Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations (XSLT) is considered one of the basic XML specifications. This tutorial explains how to create XSLT stylesheets. It also covers the basics of XPath, which enables you to select specific parts of an XML document. Finally, it gives you a look at some of the more advanced capabilities that XSLT offers.
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Tutorials |
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23 Jan 2007 |
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XML in 2006
Join Elliotte Rusty Harold for a look back at the most significant XML news from 2006.
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Articles |
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16 Jan 2007 |
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Add IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition to your Web site
Learn how you can quickly and easily integrate a freely downloadable search engine into your
Web site. This article describes four methods to do this, using IBM OmniFind Yahoo! Edition
search functionality. The methods range from directly linking to the OmniFind
search results page, to using XSLT to transform the XML returned by the OmniFind search API into the
HTML of your design.
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Articles |
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13 Dec 2006 |
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Planning to upgrade XSLT 1.0 to 2.0, Part 3: Why the transition requires planning
Part 1 of this series described some long-sought XSLT features that will be added to the new 2.0 version. Part 2 discussed different strategies for upgrading to 2.0, with the amount of advance planning being one of the main differentiators. This part is a deeper exploration of the changes you will need or want to perform as you upgrade.
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Articles |
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29 Nov 2006 |
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Planning to upgrade XSLT 1.0 to 2.0, Part 2: Five strategies for changing from XSLT 1.0 to 2.0
XSLT 2.0 has features that allow a gradual upgrade of 1.0 stylesheets. However, some situations call for an overhaul, so you can review and improve the whole architecture. Should you overhaul or try the gradual approach? This article presents some relevant design issues to help you decide. You also get some guidance on the organizational characteristics that indicate success or difficulty for each upgrade strategy.
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Articles |
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14 Nov 2006 |
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Simple Xalan extension functions
The Xalan XSLT processor can invoke almost any method in almost any Java(TM) class in the classpath. Doing so can improve performance, provide features like trigonometric functions that aren't available in XSLT, perform file I/O, talk to databases and network servers, or implement algorithms that are easy to write in the Java language but hard to write in XSLT. Learn the basics of invoking Java code from Xalan.
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Articles |
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07 Nov 2006 |
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Working XML: Serve friendlier RSS and Atom feeds
In this article, Benoit offers a technique to help visitors to your Web site read and understand the RSS and Atom feeds.
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Articles |
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24 Oct 2006 |
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Planning to upgrade XSLT 1.0 to 2.0, Part 1: Improvements in XSLT
XSLT 2.0 introduces numerous new features, and some are specifically designed to address XSLT 1.0 shortcomings. Explore some of the most highly desirable features: grouping, Implicit Document Nodes, user-defined functions, date-time manipulation, Schema-awareness, and numerous output enhancements. The examples in this article provide common applications of pure 1.0 syntax versus the replacement of the much simpler and more versatile 2.0 syntax.
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Articles |
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12 Oct 2006 |
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XML and Related Technologies certification prep, Part 4: XML transformations
When an application needs to share data with another system, it is often necessary to transform an XML document into another XML format, governed by a differing XML Schema or Document Type Definition (DTD). When an application is required to share or display XML data to a user, the XML document might be transformed into HTML, Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), VoiceXML, plain text, or any of a large number of human-readable formats. This XML certification tutorial deals with the XML transformations that make this happen by demonstrating the use of XSLT, XPath, and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).
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Tutorials |
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10 Oct 2006 |
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Introduction to XForms, Part 2: Forms, models, controls, and submission actions
XForms is the next generation of Web-based data processing. It replaces traditional HTML forms with an XML data model and presentation elements. In this three-part series, you'll be introduced to XForms and its capabilities, including the basic XForms model and form, the various types of controls, and basic and advanced form submission. This article, the second of a three-part series, focuses on creating an XForms-based form using any of the available controls, as well as creating a data model.
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Articles |
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19 Sep 2006 |
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Generate JSON from XML to use with Ajax
The use of JavaScript code to add interactivity to your data-driven Web applications is hot nowadays. If you can encode your data as JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), you'll simplify its use with the JavaScript language. Discover different approaches that use XSLT V2 to generate JSON from XML data.
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Articles |
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12 Sep 2006 |
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Automate XML file updates, Part 1: XML Process introduction and conversion stylesheet creation
This is the first part of a tutorial series that describes a method for automating updates to a library of XML files so that they all conform to an updated XML schema. In Part 1, you learn the steps in the entire process and then create an XSLT stylesheet to update the XML files. In Part 2, you learn to install, configure, and run Apache Ant and Java SE to iteratively transform each of your XML files based on the updates specified in your XSLT stylesheet.
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Tutorials |
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17 Aug 2006 |
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Automate XML file updates, Part 2: Use Apache Ant and conversion stylesheets to update your XML
This is the second part of a tutorial series that describes a method for automating updates to a library of XML files so that they all conform to an updated XML schema. In Part 1, you learn the steps of the entire process, and then create an XSLT stylesheet to update the XML files. Here, in Part 2, you learn to install, configure, and run Ant and Java SE to iteratively transform each of your XML files based on the updates specified in your XSLT stylesheet.
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Tutorials |
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17 Aug 2006 |
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Automate XML file updates, Part 1: XML process introduction and conversion stylesheet creation
This is the first part of a tutorial series that describes a method for automating updates to a library of XML files so that they all conform to an updated XML schema. In Part 1, you learn the steps in the entire process and then create an XSLT stylesheet to update the XML files. In Part 2, you learn to install, configure, and run Apache Ant and Java SE to iteratively transform each of your XML files based on the updates specified in your XSLT stylesheet.
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Tutorials |
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17 Aug 2006 |
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Automate XML file updates, Part 2: Use Apache Ant and conversion stylesheets to update your XML
This is the second part of a tutorial series that describes a method for automating updates to a library of XML files so that they all conform to an updated XML schema. In Part 1, you learn the steps of the entire process, and then create an XSLT stylesheet to update the XML files. Here, in Part 2, you learn to install, configure, and run Ant and Java SE to iteratively transform each of your XML files based on the updates specified in your XSLT stylesheet.
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Tutorials |
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17 Aug 2006 |
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XML in Firefox 1.5, Part 3: JavaScript meets XML in Firefox
In this third article of the XML in Firefox 1.5 series, you learn to manipulate XML with the JavaScript implementation in Mozilla Firefox. In the first two articles, you learned about the different XML-related facilities in Firefox, and the basics of XML parsing, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and XSLT stylesheet invocation.
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Articles |
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01 Aug 2006 |
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Transform Eclipse navigation files to DITA navigation files
A previous article described the basics for transforming Eclipse navigation files to Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) format. In August 2005, the OASIS DITA Toolkit 1.1 implemented a new way to integrate DITA navigation files. The new capability is called mapref and provides an alternative to using the navref element to integrate navigation files, as described in the previous article. This article compares the mapref and navref methods of integrating navigation files. You'll find the download archive for this article includes an updated XSLT stylesheet that exploits the mapref capability and offers other enhancements to the stylesheet from the earlier article.
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Articles |
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01 Aug 2006 |
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Tip: Loop with recursion in XSLT
XSLT is a functional programming language like Haskell or Scheme, and unlike C or Fortran. Thus it has no loops and no mutable variables. Instead, you must replace these constructs with recursion and parameters. This tip demonstrates how to provide this functionality using named templates and the xsl:call-template, xsl:with-param, and xsl:param elements.
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28 Jul 2006 |
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Tip: Debug stylesheets with xsl:message
In this tip, discover several possible ways you can use the xsl:message element to assist with understanding and debugging Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation (XSLT) stylesheets.
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18 Jul 2006 |
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Working XML: Get started with XPath 2.0
XPath 2.0 is the foundation of two essential recommendations currently in the final stages of development at W3C: XSLT 2.0 and XQuery. It is a major rewrite designed to significantly increase the power and efficiency of the language. In this article, Benoit Marchal shows how the new data model enables you to easily write more sophisticated requests.
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30 May 2006 |
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Advanced XML validation
XSLT stylesheets are designed to transform XML documents. Coupled with Java extensions, stylesheets can also be a powerful complement to XML Schema when grammar-based validation cannot cover all the constraints required. In this article, Peter Heneback presents the case for validating documents using XSLT with Java extensions and provides practical guidance and code samples.
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09 May 2006 |
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Tip: Remove sensitive content from your XML samples with XSLT
Do you need to share samples of your XML code, but can't disclose the data? For example, you might need to post a sample of your XML code with a question to get some advice with a problem. In this tip, Uche Ogbuji shows how to use XSLT to remove sensitive content and retain the basic XML structure.
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11 Apr 2006 |
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Working XML: Comparing XSLT 2.0 and XQuery
The W3C is putting the final touches on major updates of XSLT and XPath. In the process, they have created a new language, XQuery, which might compete with XSLT in some projects. Learn the specifics of each language and decide which one will save you more time in your projects.
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04 Apr 2006 |
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XML in Firefox 1.5, Part 2: Basic XML processing
This second article in the series, "XML in Firefox 1.5," focuses on basic XML processing. Firefox supports XML parsing, Cascading Stylesheets (CSS), and XSLT stylesheets. You also want to be aware of some limitations. In the first article of this series, "XML in Firefox 1.5, Part 1: Overview of XML features," Uche Ogbuji looked briefly at the different XML-related facilities in Firefox.
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21 Mar 2006 |
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XML in Firefox 1.5, Part 1: Overview of XML features
The open source Firefox Web browser continues to grow in popularity. Users like the security and convenience features it offers. Developers like the Firefox attention to standards compliance, inherited from its Mozilla roots. The most recent version, Firefox 1.5, comes with many features for XML developers, including XML parsing, XHTML, CSS, XSLT, SVG, XML Events in JavaScript, and XForms. Additional third-party extensions provide even more XML support. In this article, Uche Ogbuji provides an overview of XML features in Firefox 1.5.
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21 Mar 2006 |
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Processing WSDL documents with XSLT
Explore a variety of methods that can be used to express WSDL documents with XSLT. The author outlines approaches and discusses the benefits and challenges of working with this powerful XML-based tool.
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14 Feb 2006 |
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Thinking XML: Good advice for creating XML
The use of XML has become widespread, but much of it is not well formed. When it is well formed, it's often of poor design, which makes processing and maintenance very difficult. And much of the infrastructure for serving XML can compound these problems. In response, there has been some public discussion of XML best practices, such as Henri Sivonen's document, "HOWTO Avoid Being Called a Bozo When Producing XML." Uche Ogbuji frequently discusses XML best practices on IBM developerWorks, and in this column, he gives you his opinion about the main points discussed in such articles.
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31 Jan 2006 |
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Practical data binding: XPath as data binding tool, Part 2
Once you understand XPath syntax and location paths, accessing XML without the overhead of DOM and SAX is possible and even easy. Fortunately for Java developers, the Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) provides a native Java solution for creating XPath requests and using the results in your applications. In this article, the second in a two-part series, you'll learn how to create an XPath request, execute that request, and work with the resulting node set -- all within a comfortable Java environment.
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04 Jan 2006 |
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Process Atom 1.0 with XSLT
Atom 1.0 is the emerging Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard for Web feeds -- information updates on Web site contents. Since Atom is an XML format, XSLT is a powerful tool for processing it. In this tutorial, Uche Ogbuji looks at XSLT techniques for processing Atom documents, addressing real-life use cases.
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13 Dec 2005 |
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Tip: Computing word count in XML documents
XML is text and yet more than just text -- sometimes you want to work with just the content rather than the tags and other markup. In this tip, Uche Ogbuji demonstrates simple techniques for counting the words in XML content using XSLT with or without additional tools.
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29 Sep 2005 |
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Thinking XML: Serving up WordNet as XML
A few articles back, Uche Ogbuji discussed WordNet 2.0, a Princeton University project that aims to build a database of English words and lexical relationships between them. He showed how to extract XML serializations from the word database. In this article he continues the exploration, demonstrating code to serve up these WordNet/XML documents over Web protocols and showing you how to access these from XSLT.
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30 Aug 2005 |
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Tip: Combine and alternate xml-stylesheet processing instructions
Insert multiple xml-stylesheet processing instructions into a document's prolog in order to provide different views for different users. This tip also shows you how to include pseudo-attributes to fine tune your presentations.
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22 Jul 2005 |
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Display XML with Cascading Stylesheets: Use Cascading Stylesheets to display XML, Part 3: Combine XSLT and CSS to process XML
In Parts 1 and 2 of this tutorial series, Uche Ogbuji has shown how to use Cascading Stylesheets (CSS) to display XML in browsers, presenting basic and advanced techniques. Although some people see XSLT and CSS as opposing technologies, they are actually very complementary. CSS cannot, and is not designed to, handle many XML rendering tasks. You can use XSLT for many such tasks, and even manage the CSS that is still used to fine-tune the presentation. This tutorial covers techniques for using XSLT to process XML in association with CSS.
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20 Jun 2005 |
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IBM XML certification success, Part 2: Prepare for IBM XML certification with more technologies
This is the second part of a three-part tutorial series designed specifically for those interested in taking the IBM Certified Solution Developer Exam for XML and Related Technologies. Here, authors Pradeep Chopra and Hari Vignesh Padmanaban follow up on the lessons in Part 1 by introducing the reader to several more critical XML technologies like XPath, XSLT, XLink, XPointer, CSS, XSL-FO, SAX, and DOM. Furthermore, the authors reinforce the reader's understanding through examples and exercises.
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31 May 2005 |
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All about JAXP, Part 2
Part 1 of this two-part series introduced the Java API for XML Processing (JAXP) and its parsing and validation features. JAXP also offers Java programmers the ability to transform XML documents using Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). Through both direct programmatic access and XSL templating, JAXP makes conversion from one XML format to another an easy task. This article shows you how to use JAXP to transform XML documents and how to cache XSL stylesheets for the best performance possible.
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31 May 2005 |
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What kind of language is XSLT?
What kind of a language is XSLT, what is it for, and why was it designed the way it is? These questions get many different answers, and beginners are often confused because the language is so different from anything they are used to. This article tries to put XSLT in context. Without trying to teach you to write XSLT style sheets, it explains where the language comes from, what it's good at, and why you should use it.
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20 Apr 2005 |
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Saxon: Anatomy of an XSLT processor
This article describes how an XSLT processor, in this case the author's open-source Saxon, actually works.
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20 Apr 2005 |
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Tip: Javadoc as XML
A lot of value is locked up in your Java code: all your classes and interfaces, as well as their instance variables and methods. You can use these data to create documentation, to build code generators, or to provide metrics for project reporting.
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14 Apr 2005 |
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Transform Eclipse navigation files to DITA navigation files
For Eclipse help plug-in developers, navigation files (TOC files) represent a considerable investment of effort. If you decide to convert the source files for an Eclipse plug-in to Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) files, then you'll find tools to assist you with converting the HTML files, but the readily available tools do not support conversion of TOC files to DITA map files. This article provides an XSLT stylesheet for converting Eclipse TOC files to DITA map files.
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06 Apr 2005 |
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Tip: Twisting XML with XSLT 2.0
The XML story has two sides: data creators and data consumers. XSL typically falls on the consumer side of the equation, and all too often the format of the data is fixed well before a template gets to it. Take a list of books, for example. You might have an XML file with a list sorted by title, but what if you want the list to be sorted by author, or you just want to display the distinct author names? Can XSL do that?
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31 Mar 2005 |
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Use XSLT to prepare XML for import into OpenOffice Calc
The popular open source office suite OpenOffice.org is XML-savvy at its core. It uses XML in its file formats and offers several XML-processing plug-ins, so you might expect it to have nice tools built in for importing XML data. Unfortunately, things are not so simple, and a bit of work is required to manipulate general XML into delimited text format in order to import the data into its spreadsheet component, Calc. This article offers a quick XSLT tool for this purpose and demonstrates the Calc import of records-oriented XML. In addition to learning a practical trick for working with Calc, you might also learn a few handy XSLT techniques for using dynamic criteria to transform XML.
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25 Mar 2005 |
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Tip: Create multiple files in XSLT 2.0
For any reasonably complex data set, you need multiple views to navigate it. Take a QA test system, for example: With a pool of tests and test results, you need to see the data by date, by test category, by individual test, and so on. Each view would be in its own HTML file. So, can you have a single template in XSLT 2.0 build multiple HTML files from the one input data set?
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18 Mar 2005 |
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Tip: Batch processing XML with XSLT 2.0
A common problem with XSLT is that it takes only a single XML file as input. You can use a cross-platform Java tool to create an XML directory listing, then use XSLT to process every file in the directory from that listing. This tip covers installation and use of such a tool, as well as the corresponding XSL that processes multiple files from the directory listing.
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07 Mar 2005 |
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Code generation in XSLT 2.0, Part 2: Generate PHP with XSLT 2.0
In Part 2 of this two-part series on XSLT, Jack Herrington shows you how to expand the XSLT 2.0 code generator that you built in Part 1 to create the PHP portion of the code that provides the database access for a Web server.
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18 Feb 2005 |
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Code generation in XSLT 2.0, Part 1: Generate SQL with XSLT 2.0
Learn to use the cutting-edge features of XSLT 2.0 and generate PHP code from an abstract data model. In Part 1 of this two-part series, Jack Herrington uses a robust multilevel transform technique to show you how to take a simple model of a target database and generate the SQL for the database server.
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08 Feb 2005 |
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Working XML: Define and load extension points
In this article, Benoit takes integration between XM, the simple content-management solution, and Eclipse one step further. Publishing a Web site requires you to work with many file types in addition to XML, so it makes sense to design a publishing system around an extensible core. Eclipse plug-ins fit the bill nicely. Benoit shows how to make the XM plug-in extensible to accommodate multiple file types.
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03 Feb 2005 |
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An early look at sXBL
SVG's XML Binding Language -- sXBL -- is an XML vocabulary being developed at the W3C as a means of mapping XML elements in arbitrary vocabularies to Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) pictures that represent those elements. For example, an XML Metadata Interchange (XMI) document can be turned into SVG code that shows the actual Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram encoded in the XMI document. But sXBL takes the separation of presentation from content one step further: It is a generic language for rendering documents as arbitrarily complex two-dimensional pictures. This article offers an overview of this emerging and potentially powerful technology.
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25 Jan 2005 |
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Tip: Packaging XSLT lookup tables as EXSLT functions
In an earlier tip, Uche Ogbuji demonstrated how to build lookup tables in XSLT. In a follow-up tip, he covered how to handle error or default conditions for such a lookup. This tip shows how to use the functions module from EXSLT, the community standard in XSLT extensions, and how this technique further improves such lookup tables by packaging code into easily reusable functions.
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24 Jan 2005 |
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Tip: Default and error handling in XSLT lookup tables
In a previous tip, Uche Ogbuji demonstrated how to build lookup tables in XSLT. One follow-up question to emerge from that article is how to handle error or default conditions in XSLT lookup tables. This tip illustrates how to do so.
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22 Dec 2004 |
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XMLize
Many XML technologies and tools, such as XSL for transforming or formatting XML data, are useful and powerful. In some cases, it even makes sense to use XML technologies to process non-XML data. This article introduces the idea of handling non-XML data with XML technologies based on the author's experience developing a data transformation tool. The key point here is to XMLize the non-XML file format first, and then further process the generated XML files with a corresponding XML technology.
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03 Dec 2004 |
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Working XML: Take advantage of lessons learned by refactoring XM
In this article, Benoit continues to work on a new version of XM, the simple content management solution that's based on XML and integrated with Eclipse. Benoit discusses issues faced while refactoring code and shows you how to create an incremental builder in Eclipse.
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30 Nov 2004 |
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Thinking XML: Hacking XML Hacks
XML Hacks is a book of tips and tricks for XML users. This useful resource covers a wide variety of topics, but in some cases further expansion and alternatives to material covered could be even more helpful. In this article, Uche Ogbuji offers practical observations based on topics from the book.
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14 Sep 2004 |
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Analyze with XSLT: Tie in data with Web services and XSL Transformations
In Part 5 of this tutorial series on analyzing data with XSLT, the MindMap Research Team decides to tie their data in with other services, pulling information from Amazon Web Services in response to information unearthed in the analysis. Web services provide information in XML, but it's rarely in the form that you want it, so this tutorial explains how to create an application that not only retrieves the Amazon data but also transforms it into XHTML and outputs it to the browser. The stylesheet shows how to pull XML information from multiple sources within a single transformation and also includes a device that alerts developers when Amazon changes the Web service, since changes in the feed can break the application.
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17 Aug 2004 |
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