Java and XSLT

Transformation Process

Now that we have seen an example, let’s back up and talk about some basics. In particular, it is important to understand the relationship between <xsl:template match=...> and <xsl:apply-templates select=...>. This should help to solidify your understanding of the previous example and lay the groundwork for more sophisticated processing. Although XSLT is a language, it is not intended to be a general-purpose programming language. Because of its specialized mission as a transformation language,^[6] the design of XSLT works in the way that XML is structured, which is fundamentally a tree data structure.

XML Tree Data Structure

Every well-formed XML document forms a tree data structure. The document itself is always the root of the tree, and every element within the document has exactly one parent. Since the document itself is the root, it has no parent. As you learn XSLT, it can be helpful to draw pictures of your XML data that show its tree structure. Figure 2-2 illustrates the tree structure for discussionForumHome.xml.

Figure 2-2. Tree structure for discussionForumHome.xml

The document itself is the root of the tree and may contain processing instructions, the document root element, and even comments. XSLT has the ability to select any of these items, although you will probably want to select elements and attributes when transforming to HTML. As mentioned earlier, ...