XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

TrAX

Unfortunately, there is no standard API for XSLT that works across languages and engines: each vendor provides its own unique API. The closest thing to a standard XSLT API is the Transformations API for XML (TrAX), included in JAXP. However, this is limited to Java and is not even supported by all Java-based XSLT engines. Nonetheless, since it is the closest thing to a standard there is, we will discuss it here.

Code that transforms an XML document using an XSLT stylesheet through TrAX follows these six steps. All of the classes mentioned are in the javax.xml.transform package, a standard part of Java 1.4 and later and a separately installable option in earlier versions.

1. Call the TransformerFactory.newInstance( ) factory method to create a new TransformerFactory object.

2. Construct a Source object from the XSLT stylesheet.

3. Pass this Source object to the TransformerFactory object’s newTransform( ) method to create a Transform object.

4. Construct a Source object from the input XML document you wish to transform.

5. Construct a Result object into which the transformed XML document will be output.

6. Pass the Source and the Result to the Transform object’s transform( ) method.

The source can be built from a DOM Document object, a SAX InputSource, or an InputStream—represented by the javax.xml.transform.dom.DOMSource, javax.xml.transform.sax.SAXSource, and javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource classes, respectively. The result of the transform can be a DOM Document object, a SAX ContentHandler ...