ADO.NET 3.5 Cookbook, 2nd Edition

9.10. Transforming a DataSet Using XSLT

Problem

You need to use an XSLT stylesheet to transform the contents of a DataSet.

Solution

Create an XslTransform object and call the Transform() method.

The solution uses a single XSLT stylesheet to transform the XML for the HumanResources.Contact table in the AdventureWorks database into HTML displaying the contact data in an HTML table.

The XSLT stylesheet Contact.xslt used to transform the data into HTML is shown in Example 9-16. The solution assumes the stylesheet is in the same directory as the project file TransformDataSetXslt.csproj.

Example 9-16. Contact.xslt

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
<xsl:template match="/">
<html>
<body>
    <table>
        <tr bgcolor="#AAAAAA">
            <td>Contact ID</td>
            <td>First Name</td>
            <td>Last Name</td>
        </tr>

        <xsl:for-each select="/ContactDS/Contact">
            <tr>
                <td>
                    <xsl:value-of select="ContactID" />
                </td>
                <td>
                    <xsl:value-of select="FirstName" />
                </td>
                <td>
                    <xsl:value-of select="LastName" />
                </td>
            </tr>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </table>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

The solution fills a DataSet with a several fields from the TOP 10 rows of the Person.Contact table in the AdventureWorks database. The XSLT transformation is created from the stylesheet Contact.xslt and used to transform the DataSetinto a HTML file named Contact.html written to the same directory as the solution file TransformDataSetXslt.sln.

The C# code in Program.cs ...