Performing XSL Transformations with JavaScript

by Maxim Porges @ 11:38 PM
At Highwinds, we document release notes for our software releases on our wiki. While this is a necessary and sensible practice, I do find it a little tedious since it requires copying some of the information from Bugzilla to our wiki.

Since I am lazy, and Bugzilla allows export of search results to XML, I made an XSL style sheet to convert the results of a bug search for a particular release to wiki text that TWiki would understand. This was all well and good, but required me to go through a number of manual steps...

Software Review: XMLSpy 2008 From Altova

Written by T. Michael Testi
Published June 12, 2008
See also:
» Product Review: ColorMunki From X-Rite
» Software Review: NetAdvantage For .NET Suite- NetAdvantage For Windows Forms 2008 Volume 1 From Infragistics
» The Writing Was on the Wall But GM Couldn't Read It

XMLSpy 2008 is the latest version of Altova's integrated development environment (IDE) for XML. XMLSpy allows programmers to create XML-based applications and Web services in a more dynamic and easier to understand environment. The version that I am reviewing is XMLSpy 2008 release 2 which came out on May 7, 2008 and it is based on the Enterprise version. There is also a Professional version and if you would like to view the differences between the two, you can check out the feature comparison list.

XSLT, Second Edition

By Doug Tidwell
Second Edition June 2008
Pages: 986
ISBN 10: 0-596-52721-7 | ISBN 13: 9780596527211

Book description

After months of anticipation and delay, the W3C finally released the XSLT 2.0 standard in January 2007. The updated edition of this book offers practical, real-world examples that demonstrate how you can apply XSLT stylesheets to XML data using either the new specification, or the older XSLT 1.0 standard. Want to find out how the 2.0 specification improves on the old? This book will explain.

Integrated Support for XML Data Management

XML is increasingly being used as the language of data exchange. An XML document based on a DTD or a XML Schema contains data that conforms to a standard structure. A number of technologies, such as ebXML (Electronic Business XML), UDDI (Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration), and RDF (Resource Description Framework) are based on XML. New business concepts, such as B2C and B2B, e-services, commerce resource platform, peer-to-peer commerce and collaborative commerce, have emerged as a result of XML. In this article, XML data management in Adaptive Server Enterprise 12.5 is highlighted.

Database’s Role in XML Data Management
Most XML processing without a database is done in the application layer. XML processing in the application layer has its disadvantages. Parsing XML in the application layer doesn’t include storing and querying the parsed XML document. Querying XML data with XPath and XQuery with a query engine isn’t supported. Transforming data with a XSLT processor and storing data in a file system is less optimal than database-based transformation and storage.

DocBook XSL - ePub target is ready for wider testing

If you're using the DocBook XSL distribution you've probably already seen that DocBook XSL 1.74.0 has been released with ePub support. Note that the 1.74.0 release is an experimental release, and is made available for testing and evaluation. See the release notes for a note about DocBook dot-0 releases.

Utilizing XML and XSLT in ColdFusion MX

Macromedia ColdFusion MX brings a whole new set of features and advantages to web development—silky-smooth Flash integration, way-cool support for web services and other groovy stuff that will surely make the lives of ColdFusion developers easier and more interesting. One of the neatest new features in ColdFusion MX, and one which forms the basis for many of its other new features, is its native support for XML.

XSL Tooling Updates

XSL Tooling 0.5M8

With the release Wednesday of Ganymede, the XSL Tooling project will also be having a milestone for 0.5M8. This is primarly a bug fix milestone, and XPath content assistance is a bit more intelligent. There may be a few issues still left to be worked out, but over all support for content assistance should be better. As stated earlier there is a new set of icons for the XSL Editor, and Launching/Debugging configurations. 0.5M8 is the last planned milestone. We'll work on getting a couple of release candidate ready next, and hopefully have an official 0.5 version by the end of July.

Using Annotations to Transform LINQ to XML Trees in an XSLT Style (Improved Approach)

You can use LINQ to XML to transform XML trees with the same level of power and expressability as with XSLT, and in many cases more than with XSLT.

One of the reasons that XSL is so powerful is that you can write multiple rules to transform a node. The first rule that matches is the one that is applied.

Rapid XSLT 0.1

The project is still too early in its development life cycle to be compared to other, more mature, editors and IDEs. Nevertheless, it does provide a complete set of tools that a programmer can use for writing XSLT.
There are no plans to further develop this project.
Some of the features of this editor:
- Ctrl+Shift brings up a list of frequently typed XSLT elements with a shortcut letter that allows one to be inserted.
- Shorthand Notation supports two groups of elements that abstract nicely to programmatic constructs: xsl:call-template and xsl:with-param elements and xsl:choose, xsl:when and xsl:otherwise. They can be written using the shorthand notation as a method call and a case-default construct, respectively.
- Ctrl+Alt+arrow keys navigate between elements and attributes.
- User preferences allow inserted code to be customized.
- One or more elements can be wrapped with an inserted element.
- Multiple XSLT files can be opened and edited at once.
The download file contains help sheets to explain how to use the program.
What are its known limitations?
- The preferences window is not user friendly in that the options that should be set via radio buttons are set by typing YES or NO into text fields.
- When closing an open document, the user is prompted to save even if no changes have been made to it.
- Only one construct can be typed at a time in the shorthand notation text area. Therefore, a case/default construct may not be followed by a method call, and vice versa.

Opera 9.5 review

At 6.8 MB, Opera 9.5's install file is about twice as fat as the approximately 3 MB we're used to from Opera - it is even larger than the 5.7 MB install of Mozilla Firefox 2.0 (but not larger than Firefox 3.0 at 7.8 MB).

Opera attributes some of Opera 9.5's improved speed to better support for current web standards such as (X)HTML, XML, XSLT, CSS 2.1, SVG 1.1 and JavaScript.

Testing XSL and Xpath with Java Swing

This week I finished a first version of a little java application that I created to build and test xpath expressions and xslt stylesheets.

I was very charmed with the little tool XTrans( http://www.simxtech.com/users/zc2/xtrans/). This smart tool is extreemly small (only a few KB) and enables you to edit xslt's, load xml files and transform them with the created xslt. Unfortunately for me is that it is a windows application, based on the MSXML parser. And I've not found a counterpart on Linux yet. Oh, of course you could do a lot of that with jDeveloper or XMLSpy. Maybe even better. But XTrans is so small and if you're working with xslt's, sometimes the only thing you need is a good ascii-editor and an xmlparser. And a little driver application that helps you with driving your xml and xslt trough the xmlparser.

XSL 2.0 Requirements and survey

The W3C XSL FO subgroup is working towards XSL-FO 2.0. The first public working draft of the XSL-FO 2.0 Requirements document was published at http://www.w3.org/TR/xslfo20-req/ back in March. The best way for the Requirements document, and an eventual XSL-FO 2.0, to reflect peoples’ needs is for people to read the document and provide feedback.