Python & XML

A More Complex Example

In Chapter 3, we created an XML document that represents the Python classes in the PyXML package (index.py). The pyxml.xml file from Chapter 3 is a lengthy XML document, and makes a good test subject.

In this section, we convert the pyxml.xml file back to HTML, but this time using XSLT instead of a SAX driver. After using XSLT to perform this, the SAX and string approach from Chapter 2 will not seem nearly as powerful. However, this type of conversion work is exactly what XSLT is designed to accomplish. The basic structure of the pyxml.xml document consists of a file element, followed by one or more class elements, followed by one or more method definition elements:

<file name="../xml/dom/ext/reader/HtmlLib.py">
        <class name="class HtmlToDomParser(SGMLParser):">
                <method name="def __init__(self):"/>
                <method name="def unknown_starttag(self,tag,attrs):"/>
                <method name="def unknown_endtag(self, tag):"/>
                <method name="def handle_data(self, data):"/>
                <method name="def handle_comment(self, comment):"/>
                <method name="def handle_generic_node(self, node):"/>
                <method name="def report_unbalanced(self, tag):"/>
                <method name="def toDom(self, st, ownerDoc=None):"/>
        </class>
</file>

The above XML represents only a few lines of the 2600 line file. The stylesheet used to convert this XML to HTML uses a combination of apply-templates and value-of elements to traverse the structure and generate appropriate output.

The stylesheet starts by creating the HTML opening and closing elements, ...