book

XSLT Cookbook, 2nd Edition

by Sal Mangano

December 2005

Intermediate to advanced

774 pages

19h 30m

English

O'Reilly Media, Inc.

Read now

Unlock full access

Structure of This BookConventions Used in This BookUsing Code ExamplesSafari EnabledHow to Contact UsAcknowledgments
Introduction1.1. Effectively Using Axes1.2. Filtering Nodes1.3. Working with Sequences1.4. Shrinking Conditional Code with If Expressions1.5. Eliminating Recursion with for Expressions1.6. Taming Complex Logic Using Quantifiers1.7. Using Set Operations1.8. Using Node Comparisons1.9. Coping with XPath 2.0’s Extended Type System1.10. Exploiting XPath 2.0’s Extended Type System
Introduction2.1. Testing If a String Ends with Another String2.2. Finding the Position of a Substring2.3. Removing Specific Characters from a String2.4. Finding Substrings from the End of a String2.5. Duplicating a String N Times2.6. Reversing a String2.7. Replacing Text2.8. Converting Case2.9. Tokenizing a String2.10. Making Do Without Regular Expressions2.11. Exploiting Regular Expressions2.12. Using the EXSLT String Extensions
Introduction3.1. Formatting Numbers3.2. Rounding Numbers to a Specified Precision3.3. Converting from Roman Numerals to Numbers3.4. Converting from One Base to Another3.5. Implementing Common Math Functions3.6. Computing Sums and Products3.7. Finding Minimums and Maximums3.8. Computing Statistical Functions3.9. Computing Combinatorial Functions3.10. Testing Bits
Introduction4.1. Calculating the Day of the Week4.2. Determining the Last Day of the Month4.3. Getting Names for Days and Months4.4. Calculating Julian and Absolute Day Numbers from a Specified Date4.5. Calculating the Week Number for aSpecified Date4.6. Working with the Julian Calendar4.7. Working with the ISO Calendar4.8. Working with the Islamic Calendar4.9. Working with the Hebrew Calendar4.10. Formatting Dates and Times4.11. Determining Secular and Religious Holidays
Introduction5.1. Ignoring Duplicate Elements5.2. Selecting All but a Specific Element5.3. Selecting Nodes by Context5.4. Performing a Preorder Traversal5.5. Performing a Postorder Traversal5.6. Performing an In-Order Traversal5.7. Performing a Level-Order Traversal5.8. Processing Nodes by Position
Introduction6.1. Convert Simple Named Templates to XSLT Functions6.2. Prefer for-each-group over Muenchian Method of Grouping6.3. Modularizing and Modes6.4. Using Types for Safety and Precision6.5. Avoiding 1.0 to 2.0 Porting Pitfalls6.6. Emulating Object-Oriented Reuse and Design Patterns6.7. Processing Unstructured Text with Regular Expressions6.8. Solving Difficult Serialization Problems with Character Maps6.9. Outputting Multiple Documents6.10. Handling String Literals Containing Quote Characters6.11. Understanding the New Capabilities of Old XSLT 1.0 Features
Introduction7.1. Dealing with Whitespace7.2. Exporting XML to Delimited Data7.3. Creating a Columnar Report7.4. Displaying a Hierarchy7.5. Numbering Textual Output7.6. Wrapping Text to a Specified Width and Alignment
Introduction8.1. Converting Attributes to Elements8.2. Converting Elements to Attributes8.3. Renaming Elements or Attributes8.4. Merging Documents with Identical Schema8.5. Merging Documents with Unlike Schema8.6. Splitting Documents8.7. Flattening an XML Hierarchy8.8. Deepening an XML Hierarchy8.9. Reorganizing an XML Hierarchy

Introduction9.1. Performing Set Operations on Node Sets9.2. Performing Set Operations on Node Sets Using Value Semantics9.3. Determining Set Equality by Value9.4. Performing Structure-Preserving Queries9.5. Joins9.6. Implementing the W3C XML Query-UseCases in XSLT
Introduction10.1. Using XSLT as a Styling Language10.2. Creating Hyperlinked Documents10.3. Creating HTML Tables10.4. Creating Frames10.5. Creating Data-Driven Stylesheets10.6. Creating a Self-Contained HTML Transformation10.7. Populating a Form
Introduction11.1. Transforming an Existing Boilerplate SVG11.2. Creating Reusable SVG Generation Utilities for Graphs and Charts11.3. Creating a Tree Diagram11.4. Creating Interactive SVG-Enabled Web Pages
Introduction12.1. Generating Constant Definitions12.2. Generating Switching Code12.3. Generating Message-Handling Stub Code12.4. Generating Data Wrappers12.5. Generating Pretty Printers12.6. Generating a Test Data-Entry Web Client12.7. Generating Test-Entry Web CGI12.8. Generating Code from UML Models via XMI12.9. Generating XSLT from XSLT
Introduction13.1. Converting Visio VDX Documents to SVG13.2. Working with Excel XML Spreadsheets13.3. Generating XTM Topic Maps from UML Modelsvia XMI13.4. Generating Web Sites from XTM Topic Maps13.5. Serving SOAP Documentation from WSDL
Introduction14.1. Saxon Extension Functions14.2. Saxon Extension Elements14.3. Xalan-Java 2 Extension Functions14.4. Java Extension Function Using the Class Format Namespace14.5. Java Extension Function Using the Package Format Namespace14.6. Java Extension Function Using the Java Format Namespace14.7. Scripting Extension Function Using Inline Script Code14.8. Xalan-Java 2 Extension Elements14.9. Java Extension Element14.10. Scripting Extension Elements14.11. MSXML Extension Functions14.12. Using Saxon’s and Xalan’s Native Extensions14.13. Extending XSLT with JavaScript14.14. Adding Extension Functions Using Java14.15. Adding Extension Elements Using Java14.16. Using XSLT from Perl14.17. Using XSLT from Java
Introduction15.1. Using xsl:message Effectively15.2. Tracing the Flow of Your Stylesheet Through Its Input Document15.3. Automating the Insertion of Debug Output15.4. Including Embedded Unit Test Data in Utility Stylesheets15.5. Structuring Unit Tests15.6. Testing Boundary and Error Conditions
Introduction16.1. Creating Polymorphic XSLT16.2. Creating Generic Element Aggregation Functions16.3. Creating Generic Bounded Aggregation Functions16.4. Creating Generic Mapping Functions16.5. Creating Generic Node-Set Generators

Content preview from XSLT Cookbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter 4. Dates and Times

Does anyone really know what time it is? Does anyone really care?

Chicago

Introduction

Native XSLT 1.0 does not know what time it is and does not seem to care. However, dates and times are a necessary aspect of everyday life. The need to manipulate them arises frequently in computing, especially in web development. Therefore, it was surprising and unfortunate that standard XSLT 1.0 did not have any built-in date and time support.

The situation in XSLT 2.0 has improved substantially. XPath 2.0 has numerous functions for manipulating dates, times, and durations. In fact, the only thing 2.0 leaves us wanting for, with respect to date and time, is functions with shorter names! I am told names like subtract-dates-yielding-yearMonthDuration() were provided partly to appease the XQuery database weenies. The alternation between dashes and camelcase follows from the differing conventions adopted by XPath and XML Schema committees.

The examples in this section can help compensate for XSLT 1.0’s lack of support for dates and times. Unfortunately, one of the most crucial date and time capabilities cannot be implemented in XSLT 1.0—that is, getting the current date and time. For that, you need to call out to another language whose library supports interacting with the hardware’s real-time clock. Both Java and JavaScript have this capability. If your application just needs to format dates and times that already exist in a document, then the routines here should cover ...