Re: RE: [xsl] client-side ajax & xslt

Subject: Re: RE: [xsl] client-side ajax & xslt
From: Lindsey Simon <lsimon@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 09 Mar 2007 10:17:23 -0600
Joe Fawcett wrote:
Erik

Reading your question I'm not completely sure if you want to use Ajax and server-side transformations or client-side ones, Sarissa is a cross-browser client-side XML/XSLT framework.
I tend to avoid client-side transforma unless I know that they are extremely simple or I know there is only one target browser, an intranet for example.


I have done something similar to what you describe in ASP.NET but all the transformations have been done server-side albeit via Ajax. To be fair it was only tested in Internet Explorer and Firefox for the full functionality, for other browsers it just used a full page refresh to show the new data.


Joe



From: Erik Wilde <dret@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [xsl] client-side ajax & xslt
Date: Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:26:32 -0800

hello.

this is not an xslt programming language question, but i hope that maybe somebody knows the answer anyway, and it certainly has xslt as its main topic. here is what i want to do:

- start with an xml with tabular values which is transformed into a table (server-side) and embedded into an html page.

- on the web page surrounding the data table, there should be various buttons to reformat the table, each of these is associated with an xslt.

- when pressing the button, the xml and the xslt is loaded from the server, and the static table is replaced with the result of transforming the xml into html.

- the user can then update the display any number of times with a minimum amount of network traffic (the browser cache will cache the data and the xslt).

now, i do know that ajax frameworks such as sarissa or even better freja are supposed to support this kind of functionality, but they are poorly documented, under constant development, and seem to routinely break with every minor version of a browser. so i have two questions:

- did anybody have success implementing the above scenario, and if so, which framework did you use and on which browsers did you test it? and would you recommend to do it in the same way you did it?

- in general, is there a chance that something like this runs reasonably stable and works for the majority of users? the static strting table should be good enough for those with older browsers, but i want the more flexible solution to be available to the majority of users.

Hey Erik, you can check out a demo/paper I have online that talks about a client-side XSLT strategy and has a working example.
http://www.commoner.com/lsimon/XSLDataGrid/


I used Sarissa for a couple parts of this equation, but you're right, it's not super easy/simple - especially getting going with it.

I plan to give a talk at SXSW on Saturday in fact, demoing this component and talking about some of the hassles of the client-side approach.
You can see the rough draft online for it, and on the last page there are loads of references that may be useful to you. Use your keyboard to right-arrow through the presentation.
http://www.commoner.com/lsimon/SXSW2007-XSLT/


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Lindsey Simon
lsimon@xxxxxxxxxxxx
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