RE: Complex XSL Application (I think)

[Mark Birbeck <Mark.Birbeck@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

[Mark Birbeck]  Wendy wrote:
> Mark Birbeck wrote:
> 2. If you have server-side scripting then another method would be to
> generate the XSL dynamically - the browser won't know any different.
> 
> This sounds related to what im trying to do.
> You can assume I have server side scripting
> Could anyone expand on this and explain how i might acheive the
> following
> 
> I need to get the Service Number from the user (Browser)
> Pass this value to the server
> Create the XSL to produce an XML file with just that employees
> information
> Pass this new XML file to the browser XSL for rendering in the
> browser.
[Mark Birbeck]  
I think I'm missing something Wendy. It seems to me that the XSL should
always be the same - you just want a stylesheet that renders an
employee's information as HTML (and start with a wild card, not the name
of your employee document, so that the same stylesheet can display more
than one employee if need be). From how you've described it the dynamic
stuff should be on the XML side. A simple query on your database using
the 'service number', and then converting the returned data to an XML
document should be fine. I don't want to accuse you doing something
you're not - so don't take offence here(!) - but you wouldn't be trying
to run the query from the XSL side, would you? In other words you're not
taking a massive XML document and then finding the employee with an XSL
filter?

Had to ask!

The 'dynamic XSL' stuff I was talking about was for things like the
search order that you referred to. The following function could go in an
ASP file on the server, or be in a page running on the browser. It takes
either a URL to an XML source in sXML, or a path to an ADs object. In
your system just replace the latter with your database query, and
replace XMLExport() with a function that does the query and converts it
to XML. I'm sure you have a similar function, but the reason I'm
spelling it out is to draw attention to the fact that the source for the
'file' as used by the DOM, can be any URL, which means we can do things
like

	"stylesheets/employee.asp?order=1"

and

	"stylesheets/employee.asp?order=2"

employee.asp would your current XSL file, but there'd be a small bit of
script in there to decide what order to display the results in. (Might
be as simple as testing 'order' and writing a minus instead of a plus at
the key point.) If TransformXML was in the browser page then these
different pages would be cached locally, so switching between the
different views of the same XML data would be pretty fast.

Here's the function:

Function TransformXML(bAttributes, sADsPath, sXSL, sXML)
'
' Function only really needs one of sADsPath and sXML. We could just
test for a URI
'
On Error Resume Next
	Dim slXML
	Dim sResult
	'
	' Create an instance of the parser
	'
	Dim oData : set oData = Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")

	If Err <> 0 Then
		sResult = L_FailedToCreateXMLDOM
	Else
		If bAttributes <> 1 Then
			bAttributes = 0
		End If

		'
		' Load the XML into the parser
		'
		oData.async = False
		If sADsPath <> "" Then
			'
			' If we have a pointer to an ADSI object then we
extract the object as
			' XML as our source for the parser
			'
			slXML = XMLExport(False, False, sADsPath,
bAttributes)
			oData.loadXML(slXML)
		Else
			'
			' Otherwise we have a URL
			'
			oData.load(sXML)
		End If
		If (oData.parseError.errorCode <> 0) Then
			sResult = ReportError(oData.parseError)
		Else
			'
			' Create another parser instance, and load the
stylesheet into it
			'
			Dim oStyle : set oStyle =
Server.CreateObject("Microsoft.XMLDOM")
			If Err <> 0 Then
				sResult = L_FailedToCreateXSLDOM
			Else
				oStyle.async = False
				oStyle.load("http://yourserver/"; & sXSL)
				if (oStyle.parseError.errorCode <> 0)
Then
					sResult =
ReportError(style.parseError)
				else
					'
					' Transform the XML on the basis
of the stylesheet
					'
					sResult =
oData.transformNode(oStyle)
					If Err Then
						sResult = "<font
face=Verdana size=2><font size=4>XSL Runtime Error</font>" _
							& "<P><B>" +
err.description + "</B></P></font>"
					End If
				End If
			End If
		End If
	End If
	Set oData = Nothing
	Set oStyle = Nothing
	TransformXML = sResult
End Function


Regards,

Mark


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