Preface
Organization of This Book
The heart of this book is designed to take you through the basics of XSLT and help you solve problems with this exciting new technology. It contains the following chapters:
- Chapter 1, Getting Started
Covers the basics of XML and discusses how to install the Xalan stylesheet engine.
- Chapter 2, The Obligatory Hello World Example
Takes a look at an XML-tagged “Hello World” document, then examines stylesheets that transform it into other things.
- Chapter 3, XPath: A Syntax for Describing Needles and Haystacks
Covers the basics of XPath, the language used to describe parts of an XML document.
- Chapter 4, Branching and Control Elements
Discusses the logic elements of XSLT (
<xsl:if>and<xsl:choose>) and how they work.- Chapter 5, Creating Links and Cross-References
Covers the different ways to build links between elements in XML documents. Using XPath to describe relationships between related elements is also covered.
- Chapter 6, Sorting and Grouping Elements
Goes over the
<xsl:sort>element and discusses various ways to sort elements in an XML document. It also talks about how to do grouping with various XSLT elements and functions.- Chapter 7, Combining XML Documents
Discusses the
document()function, which allows you to combine several XML documents, then write a stylesheet that works against the collection of documents.- Chapter 8, Extending XSLT
Explains how you can write extension elements and extension functions. Although XSLT and XPath are extremely ...