Product Description

XSLT documents a core technology for processing XML. Originally created for page layout, XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Transformations) is now much more: a general-purpose translation tool, a system for reorganizing document content, and a way to generate multiple results - such as HTML, WAP, and SVG - from the same content. "XSLT" covers XSLT and XPath, a critical companion standard, and addresses topics ranging from basic transformations to complex sorting and linking. It explores extension functions on a variety of different XSLT processors and shows ways to combine multiple documents using XSLT. Code examples add a real-world dimension to each technique. Useful as XSLT is, its peculiar characteristics make it difficult to get started in, and the ability to use advanced techniques depends on a clear and exact understanding of how XSLT templates work and interact. For instance, the understanding of "variables" in XSLT is deeply different from the understanding of "variables" in procedural languages. The author explains XSLT by building from the basics to its more complex and powerful possibilities.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #319673 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08-23
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 473 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Subtitled "Mastering XML Transformations", XSLT covers a core XML technology. XML is great for processing or transporting data, but it is rarely what you want as final output. Using XSLT, you can transform XML data into a presentation format such as HTML or Adobe PDF. You can also transform data from one XML vocabulary into another. This title is both a tutorial and reference, explaining the full use of XSLT and XPath expressions.

The book opens with a concise overview of XML and a guide to installing Apache's Xalan XSLT engine, which is used for the examples throughout. The next chapter puts XSLT to work, showing how to create and apply a simple style sheet. Chapter 3 introduces XPath, with the following chapter covering more advanced topics such as branching, looping, recursion, invoking XSLT templates with parameters and using XSLT variables. The following chapter deals with linking, the next sorting and grouping, and after that the author shows how to use the document function to combine XML documents. There is a detailed look at extending XSLT with Java, Javascript and other languages. To close the tutorial section the author offers a case study centred on a tutorial-building tool he developed, with the engaging name of Toot-O-Matic. The reference section occupies nearly half of the book, and covers XSLT and XPath. It is the best kind of reference, with detailed examples, comments and illustrations. Finally there is a brief guide to common problems and a glossary.

This is a fine book for those who need to get up to speed with XSLT, which must include most XML developers. It is also worth checking out Michael Kay's XSLT Programmer's Reference. Kay's book has a little more detail, while this title is more approachable for XSLT newcomers. --Tim Anderson

John Prince, The Rational Edge, Jan 2001
The book makes you rethink your projects, past and present. If you do want to employ XSLT, this can serve as a valuable tool for deepening your knowledge.

Doug Larson, San Diego Mac Users Group, Feb 2002
A very good job explaining the XML technology with very descriptive narrative and superb examples...

Customer Reviews

Informative, witty, immediately useful
I needed to know a lot more about XSLT in a short space of time, so I bought this because it looked pretty good (the O'Reilly brand says quite a lot for starters). It is extremely good - well-structured, shorn of all the faffing-around you normally get in tutorial books for starters but still accessible to a newbie, and incidentally written with intelligence and panache. If you want to get in there with XSLT, this is the book to buy.

Probably the best XSLT reference
Much better than Wrox's offering, this O'Reilly book keeps up the good name by providing a very clear and easy to understand reference with good chapters for introducing concepts, and a small FAQ for commen issues.

Great book, quickly through the stuff you need to know
XSLT is a technology that takes a while to get used to; most people I've spoken to had no idea why their XSLT didn't work until I explained how its recursion mechanism worked, something I myself couldn't have understood without the groundwork presented in this book. Plenty of examples given, plus an excellent reference guide in the latter sections make this a very worthwhile purchase.