SSDN - General XSL Question

XML Editor

Sign Up

Search

Options

Chat

Help

News

Log in

Not Logged in

Topic

Topic Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Alex Sharp

Subject: General XSL Question
Author: Alex Sharp
Date: 09 Jun 2005 05:22 PM

I don't quite understand the concept of an XSL processor. What the processor outputs is a static file, so isn't that completely contrary to what XML is supposed to be about? Is there way to work with dynamic data and still use XSL? It seems like the only way to do this is to stay constrained within the browser interpreters, which don't have XSL 2.0 support. Could someone help me better understand XSL Processors, and if there is a way to dynamically update the result tree so it reflects changes to the source tree? Thanks.

Minollo I.

Subject: General XSL Question
Author: Minollo I.
Date: 09 Jun 2005 10:01 PM

I'm not sure I understand your reasoning. XSLT generates a static output? ...maybe it does (what is a non static output?), but using dynamic data; take a look at video tutorials on http://www.stylusstudio.com/learn_xslt.html; both generating HTML and XML, they show you something that XSLT can do.

Minollo

Ivan Pedruzzi

Subject: General XSL Question
Author: Ivan Pedruzzi
Date: 09 Jun 2005 10:01 PM

Hi Alex,

I am not sure what do you mean by "What the processor outputs is a static file".

XSLT processors execute transformations that take in input XML and generate any sort of text outputs like CSV, HTML, XML, SVG, etc.
Using XSLT you can do any kind of XML processing.

If you have downloaded Stylus Studio take a look the examples project.

Hope this helps
Ivan Pedruzzi
Stylus Studio Team

Alex Sharp

Subject: General XSL Question
Author: Alex Sharp
Date: 10 Jun 2005 01:30 AM

What I mean is, when you run a processor on an XML file, the "result tree," or file, doesn't update itself if you update the source tree. It will only update if you run the processor again. So is there a better way to do this, so where whenever I change the data in the source tree, the result tree will update as well?

Minollo I.

Subject: General XSL Question
Author: Minollo I.
Date: 10 Jun 2005 11:20 AM

Try thinking about XSLT as a SQL query to your relational database. The query itself is applied to changing data; and the result that you get is a "snapshot" of the relevant data at the time your query has been run.

XSLT is similar; you use it to identify relevant data in XML document(s) and you create a result parts of which contain snapshot of the relevand data from the XML documents at the time your XSLT has been run.

Executions of the same XSLT against different XML documents (or against the "same" logical source which changes in time) can generate completely different results; it's up to the your application using XSLT to decide what policy to adopt to provide rendering of "live" data to the user. You may decide to run the XSLT everytime a user tries to access its result; or you may decide to cache the XSLT result and refresh it only at some time interval; or anything else that can apply to your application. But those policies have nothing to do with the capabilities of XSLT itself.

Hope this helps,
Minollo

Alex Sharp

Subject: General XSL Question
Author: Alex Sharp
Date: 13 Jun 2005 04:43 AM

First of all, thanks for such a clear explanation. I didn't realize that an XSLT processor can be run from a server on the fly. The one I have been using is Saxon, which is coded in Java. I don't think you can call a Java application on the fly on a server, and if you can, I certainly don't know how to do it. Do you know of any PHP-based XSLT processors that could be easily run from and executed on the server? Thanks.

Minollo I.

Subject: General XSL Question
Author: Minollo I.
Date: 13 Jun 2005 10:20 AM

Try Google-ing the subject; you'll find plenty of information:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=use+xslt+with+php

Minollo

Topic Page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Powered by Stylus Studio, the world's leading XML IDE for XML, XSLT, XQuery, XML Schema, DTD, XPath, WSDL, XHTML, SQL/XML, and XML Mapping!

Go to Conference:

Log In Options Username: Password:

Site Map | Privacy Policy | Terms of Use | Trademarks

Stylus Studio® and DataDirect XQuery ™are from DataDirect Technologies, is a registered trademark of Progress Software Corporation, in the U.S. and other countries. © 2004-2016 All Rights Reserved.