Re: [xsl] union vs. "or" vs. contains?

[Robert Koberg <rob@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Wendell Piez wrote:
> At 12:05 PM 10/20/2004, Rob wrote:
>
> > Wendell Piez wrote:
> >
> > > > Whatever I do, I want to keep processing completely controlled by 
> > > > the configuration file.
> > >
> > >
> > > Maybe someone on this list who knows Ant better than I do (it's on my 
> > > list!) can comment on how Ant (a Java build framework) could query a 
> > > configuration file to determine which stylesheet to call when a job 
> > > is invoked. A poor man's version of the same (though of course Ant is 
> > > free) could use a batch file to run a transform on your config file, 
> > > to create another batch file (in which the delegation could be 
> > > managed), and then execute it. In other words, these things can be done.
> >
> >
> >
> > I haven't followed this thread too closely but in ant you can use 
> > 'input' to allow the user to enter data at the command line. For example:
> >
> > <input
> >   message="Enter an XSL file name:"
> >   addproperty="xsl.name"/>
> >
> > <xslt
> >   in="source.xml"
> >   out="result.html"
> >   style="${xsl.name}"/>
>
>
> Ah, that's nice.
>
> I presume it also wouldn't be hard to get a value for xsl.name by 
> querying into an XML config document? 


Sure. You can use the XmlProperty task to load properties from a well 
formed props-like file:

<root>
  <properties>
    <foo>bar.xsl</foo>
  </properties>
</root>

which is roughly equivalent to this Java property file:

root.properties.foo = bar.xsl

or
<xslt
  in="source.xml"
  out="result.html"
  style="${root.properties.foo}"/>



Of course, you could also load the config into the transformation to 
find the XSL template name to call.

Or you could transform the config file to an ant build file. You can 
also use/create an XMLCatalog for custom resolution. You can also use a 
validate task to ensure your content is valid according to some schema.

Ant is wonderful :)


> or simply doing some kind of 
> conditional testing to provide for a mapping of labels to stylesheets, 

This gets tricky in ant, but can be done using javascript or some 
scripting language that can be brought into ant (but it is kind of like 
using extensions in XSL).

> or simply
>
> <input
>   message="Which format would you like?"
>   addproperty="format"/>
>
> <xslt
>   in="source.xml"
>   out="result.html"
>   style="${format}.xsl"/>

sure -- much more user friendly :)

best,
-Rob

> Cheers,
> Wendell
>
>
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