Re: template matching everywhere

Play the video

Subject: Re: template matching everywhere
From: Wendell Piez <wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 2004 11:36:31 -0500

At 04:02 AM 3/5/2004, you wrote:

Thank you for your help, As you've understand I'm a beginner. Sorry for this stupid question but I know I misunderstood something but I didn't know what it was. I think my understanding of <xsl:apply-templates/> was a little wrong (I still have something to clarify). Now it's better.

It's a common place to get stuck, and it's good you got stuck there when you're just starting, since it's also a really important concept and your XSLT will never be very good until you've gotten your head around it.

The key thing to understand is that classically, XSLT stylesheets do not control the flow of operations in the transformation. (I say classically since there are ways of forcing things, but generally this shouldn't be done unless you need to.) Instead, xsl:apply-templates passes control back to the source document, by saying "okay now process the next elements [which are generally the child elements of the node you're on] with whatever templates are defined for them". This is really powerful, because it means that documents can have structures of arbitrary complexity, and yet a simple stylesheet can handle them properly without accounting for that structure directly. Processing many kinds of XML, such as documentary data marked up with Docbook or TEI or the NCBI Journal DTD, is next to impossible without this kind of feature, since many documents will share the same tags (same element types) without resembling each other structurally at all.

I'm gonna dip again in a book looking at the right place !!

Cool.

Enjoy,
Wendell


======================================================================
Wendell Piez                            mailto:wapiez@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Mulberry Technologies, Inc.                http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street                    Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207                                          Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD  20850                                 Fax: 301/315-8285
----------------------------------------------------------------------
  Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
======================================================================

XSL-List info and archive: http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list

Current Thread
template matching everywhere jf - Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:07:36 -0500 (EST) Wendell Piez - Thu, 4 Mar 2004 18:48:43 -0500 (EST) jf - Fri, 5 Mar 2004 04:03:35 -0500 (EST) Wendell Piez - Fri, 5 Mar 2004 11:52:19 -0500 (EST) <= David Carlisle - Fri, 5 Mar 2004 04:55:44 -0500 (EST)

<- Previous	Index	Next ->
Re: template matching everywh, jf	Thread	Re: template matching everywh, David Carlisle
Re: Problem writing xsl to co, David Carlisle	Date	RE: sum value to one variable, Michael Kay
	Month

PURCHASE STYLUS STUDIO ONLINE TODAY!

Purchasing Stylus Studio from our online shop is Easy, Secure and Value Priced!

Download The World's Best XML IDE!

Accelerate XML development with our award-winning XML IDE - Download a free trial today!

Subscribe in XML format

RSS 2.0
Atom 0.3

XML Editor - Download a 15 Day Free Trial Now >

See What's New in Stylus Studio >

Buy Stylus Studio - XML Editor - Now >