XSL Technologies

XSL Technologies

XSL has two independent languages:

   The XSL Transformation Language (XSLT)

   The XSL Formatting Object Language (XSL-FO)

XSLT is used to convert an XML document to another format. XSL-FO provides a way of describing the presentation of an XML document. Both technologies use a supporting XML technology, XPath. XPath defines a standard mechanism for accessing elements within a document. See Chapter 5, “The X-Files: XLink, XPath, and XPointer,” for more information on XPath.

We’ll start with XSLT and cover the details of XSL-FO later in the chapter.

This chapter illustrates the practical features of XSLT that are commonly used on devel-opment projects. If you would like to view the XLST specification, visit http://www.w3. org/TR/xslt.

In this chapter, you will learn how to

   Create XSL style sheets

   Perform client-side XSLT processing with XSL-enabled browsers

   Perform server-side XSLT processing with Active Server Pages and JavaServer Pages

   Retrieve data from XML documents using XSLT and XPath

   Convert XML documents to HTML

   Convert XML documents to other XML formats

   Generate PDF documents with XSL-FO

   Integrate XSLT and XSL-FO with Java servlets