The first time you sign into developerWorks, a profile is created for you. Select information in your developerWorks profile is displayed to the public, but you may edit the information at any time. Your first name, last name (unless you choose to hide them), and display name will accompany the content that you post.

All information submitted is secure.

The first time you sign in to developerWorks, a profile is created for you, so you need to choose a display name. Your display name accompanies the content you post on developerworks.

Please choose a display name between 3-31 characters. Your display name must be unique in the developerWorks community and should not be your email address for privacy reasons.

All information submitted is secure.

My developerWorks:

My notifications:

Sign out

Select a language:

Code generation using XSLT

Build a flexible framework with open source tools

Leigh Dodds (leigh@xmlhack.com), Developer and editor, Ingenta, Ltd.

Leigh Dodds is currently employed as an Engineering Manager at Ingenta. He has been developing applications on the Java platform since 1997, and has spent the last four years working with XML and related technologies. Leigh is also a contributing editor to xmlhack, and between February 2000 and June 2002, wrote the weekly "XML-Deviant" column for XML.com. He holds a Bachelors degree in biological Science, and a Masters in computing. As being the father of a lively 18 month old (Ethan) is a full-time job in itself, Leigh currently spends his copious amount of free time investigating how to improve the speed of manufacturing of Round Tuits, which he believes will revolutionize the parenting business.

Summary: The automated generation of code, when applied correctly, can be a powerful engineering technique. This tutorial provides a basic introduction to code generation concepts, and in particular introduces XSLT as a code generation tool. The tutorial also discusses the limitations of XSLT when generating code, and demonstrates how to compensate for some of these issues using a flexible framework built with open source tools, such as Ant and Jalopy. This simple but powerful framework can be applied to the generation of many different types of code.

Tag this!

Date: 28 Apr 2003
Level: Introductory
PDF: A4 and Letter (113 KB | 31 pages)Get Adobe® Reader®

Activity: 9368 views
Comments:

Tutorial introduction

Tutorial overview

The automated generation of code, when applied correctly, can be a powerful engineering technique. This tutorial provides a basic introduction to code generation concepts, and in particular introduces XSLT as a code generation tool.

The tutorial also discusses the limitations of XSLT when generating code, and demonstrates how to compensate for some of these issues using a flexible framework built with open source tools, such as Ant and Jalopy. This simple but powerful framework can be applied to the generation of many different types of code.

The examples in the tutorial illustrate how to apply this framework to the generation of both Java code and XSLT stylesheets. The latter section introduces a powerful technique called meta-stylesheets that is sure to prove useful to any XSLT author.

Who should take this tutorial?

This tutorial is designed for developers already familiar with XML, XSLT, and the Java language, and who are interested in combining these technologies to help automate development tasks and explore the potential benefits of code generation. The tutorial therefore assumes that you already understand how to write and apply XSLT stylesheets. The Resources include pointers to an XSLT tutorial for those needing a refresher on the basic concepts.

The tutorial examples also refer to Ant, an open source build tool. However, as the tutorial covers both the installation of the Ant and some background on its basic concepts, no detailed prior knowledge is assumed. If you're interested in learning more about Ant, see the Resources section.

Overall, the tutorial introduces the reader to the uses of XSLT as a code generation tool, providing useful tips, techniques, and advice.

While the majority of the examples discuss the generation of Java code, you can easily adapt the basic techniques to encompass other programming languages.

Tools

While this tutorial does not discuss how to install an XSLT processor, you are not required to have a processor installed to follow the examples. Instructions on how to install Ant, the open source Java build tool, are available in the Installing the tools section. Ant includes Xalan as an embedded XSLT processor, and the later sections (see A code generation framework ) show you how to apply XSLT transformations using Ant's built-in XSLT support. But, as no processor-specific extensions have been used, any XSLT processor will work should you care to manually apply the transformations.

The examples were tested against Ant 1.5.1. You can download the binary distributions of the latest version of Ant from the project Web site at: http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi. See Installing Ant for information on how to install Ant and the Java source code formatter, Jalopy, available at: http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=45216.

The code samples for this tutorial are available at Downloads. To install the samples, simply extract the files, preserving the directory structure, into a newly created directory. The examples for each section are contained in the following sub-directories:

bean -- the Java code generation examples referenced from the Generating JavaBeans .
meta -- the XSLT stylesheet generation examples introduced in Generating XSLT using XSLT .

Comments

Close [x]

Help: Update or add to My dW interests

What's this?

This little timesaver lets you update your My developerWorks profile with just one click! The general subject of this content (AIX and UNIX, Information Management, Lotus, Rational, Tivoli, WebSphere, Java, Linux, Open source, SOA and Web services, Web development, or XML) will be added to the interests section of your profile, if it's not there already. You only need to be logged in to My developerWorks.

And what's the point of adding your interests to your profile? That's how you find other users with the same interests as yours, and see what they're reading and contributing to the community. Your interests also help us recommend relevant developerWorks content to you.

View your My developerWorks profile

Return from help

Close [x]

Help: Remove from My dW interests

What's this?

Removing this interest does not alter your profile, but rather removes this piece of content from a list of all content for which you've indicated interest. In a future enhancement to My developerWorks, you'll be able to see a record of that content.

View your My developerWorks profile

Return from help

static.content.url=http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/js/artrating/

SITE_ID=1

Zone=XML

ArticleID=138215

TutorialTitle=Code generation using XSLT

publish-date=04282003

author1-email=leigh@xmlhack.com

author1-email-cc=dwxed@us.ibm.com