XSLTRANSFORM

The XSLTRANSFORM transforms an XML document into a different data format. The data can be transformed into any form possible for the XSLT processor, including but not limited to XML, HTML, or plain text.

data-type

ccsid-clause

normalize-clause

Use XSLTRANSFORM to convert XML data into other formats including the conversion of XML documents that conform to one XML schema into documents that conform to another XML schema.

XML-document

A character string, Unicode graphic string, binary string, or XML expression that returns a well-formed XML document. This is the document that is transformed using the XSL style sheet specified in xsl-stylesheet.

xsl-stylesheet

A character string, Unicode graphic string, binary string, or XML expression that returns a well-formed XML document. The document is an XSL style sheet that conforms to the XSLT Version 1.10 Recommendation. Style sheets incorporating the xsl:include declaration are not supported. This stylesheet is applied to transform the value specified in xml-document.

xsl-parameters

A character string, Unicode graphic string, binary string, or XML expression that returns a well-formed XML document. This is a document that provides parameter values to the XSL stylesheet specified in xsl-stylesheet. The value of the parameter can be specified as an attribute or as text.

The syntax of the parameter document is as follows:

<params xmlns="http://www.ibm.com/XSLTransformParameters">
<param name="..." value="..."/> 
<param name="...">enter value here</param> ... </params>

Note: The stylesheet document must have xsl:param element(s) in it with name attribute values that match the ones specified in the parameter document.

AS data-type

Specifies the result data type. The implicit or explicit length attribute of the specified result data type must be sufficient to contain the transformed output. The default result data type is CLOB(2G).

If a CCSID is specified and the data-type is GRAPHIC, VARGRAPHIC, or DBCLOB, the CCSID must be a Unicode CCSID.

If the CCSID attribute is not specified, the CCSID is determined as if the XML-document was cast to data-type as described in CAST specification.

The result of the function has the data type specified. CCSID conversion that results in data loss can occur when storing any of the above documents in a character data type.

If either XML-document or xsl-stylesheet is null, the result is the null value.

Note

Prerequisites: In order to use the XSLTRANSFORM function, the XML Toolkit for IBM® i and International Components for Unicode (ICU option) must be installed.

Example

This example illustrates how to use XSLT as a formatting engine. To get set up, first insert the two example documents below into the database.


CREATE TABLE XML_TAB (c1 INT, xml_doc CLOB(2M), xsl_doc CLOB(256K));
INSERT INTO XML_TAB VALUES
  (1, '<?xml version="1.0"?> 
<students xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
    xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation = "/home/steffen/xsd/xslt.xsd"> 
<student studentID="1" firstName="Steffen" lastName="Siegmund" 
    age="23" university="Rostock"/> 
</students>',

'<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> 
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
            xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> 
<xsl:param name="headline"/>
<xsl:param name="showUniversity"/> 

  <xsl:template match="students"> 
    <html> 
      <head/> 
        <body> 
          <h1><xsl:value-of select="$headline"/></h1> 
          <table border="1"> 
            <th> 
              <tr>
                <td width="80">StudentID</td> 
                <td width="200">First Name</td> 
                <td width="200">Last Name</td> 
                <td width="50">Age</td> 
                <xsl:choose> 
                  <xsl:when test="$showUniversity =''true''"> 
                    <td width="200">University</td> 
                  </xsl:when> 
                </xsl:choose> 
              </tr> 
            </th> 
          <xsl:apply-templates/> 
          </table> 
        </body> 
    </html> 
  </xsl:template>
  <xsl:template match="student"> 
    <tr> 
      <td><xsl:value-of select="@studentID"/></td> 
      <td><xsl:value-of select="@firstName"/></td> 
      <td><xsl:value-of select="@lastName"/></td> 
      <td><xsl:value-of select="@age"/></td> 
      <xsl:choose> 
        <xsl:when test="$showUniversity = ''true''"> 
          <td><xsl:value-of select="@university"/></td> 
        </xsl:when> 
      </xsl:choose> 
    </tr> 
  </xsl:template> 
</xsl:stylesheet>');

Next, call the XSLTRANSFORM function to convert the XML data into HTML and display it.

SELECT XSLTRANSFORM (XML_DOC USING XSL_DOC
  WITH '<params xmlns="http://www.ibm.com/XSLTransformParameters"></params>')
FROM XML_TAB;

The result is this document:

<html> 
<head> 
<META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> 
</head> 
<body> 
<h1></h1> 
<table border="1"> 
<th> 
<tr> 
<td width="80">StudentID</td> 
<td width="200">First Name</td> 
<td width="200">Last Name</td> 
<td width="50">Age</td> 
</tr> 
</th> 
<tr> 
<td>1</td> 
<td>Steffen</td>
<td>Siegmund</td> 
<td>23</td> 
</tr> 
</table> 
</body> 
</html>

In this example, the output is HTML and the parameters influence only what HTML is produced and what data is brought over to it. As such it illustrates the use of XSLT as a formatting engine for end-user output.