Special Edition Using XSLT

XSL Processing

This chapter is designed to give you a quick start into creating XSL style sheets. Therefore, a minimum of theory will be presented. However, before you can create even your first style sheet, it is important to understand the basics of style sheet processing. As with the rest of this book, there is an emphasis on creating XSL transformations.

When an XML document is loaded, the parser takes the document and scans all of its components, which may include

• Elements

• Attributes

• Entities

• CDATA sections

• Processing instructions

As each markup component is scanned, it is placed in a hierarchical tree structure in memory. Once the entire document is scanned, the document tree can be accessed through Application Program Interfaces (APIs) like ...