Re: [xsl] generating an HTML web hierarchy from XML using XSLT

["G. Ken Holman" <gkholman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 2002-01-22 16:24 -0500, Saverio Perugini wrote:
> Is XSLT capable of transforming an XML file modeling [only] the schema of a
> web site into to an actual HTML web hierarchy?

Through vendor extensions, yes, but not in the language as defined by W3C.

> If possible, I surmise that this task entails using XSLT to perfrom a
> depth-first search of the XML input graph and creating a new HTML file
> (and adding an <a href> to it for each child) every time a child
> is encountered.

That is not correct ... one creates each page in sequence determining all 
links as required by revisiting the source node tree.

> Is XSLT capable of creating multiple output files and manipulating and
> switching between them while processing? which this task seems to
> require.

Looking at the problem that way will not succeed, you are obligated to 
produce each result tree in result parse order, thus requiring you to 
revisit the source tree as many times as required to do all of your links.

A working example is illustrated on pages 110 through 113 of the free 
download preview of our electronic book "Practical Transformation Using 
XSLT and XPath" ... downloading the free preview does not obligate you to 
buy a copy of the book (though buying a copy does grant you perpetual 
no-charge access to all future editions of the book, including any future 
rewrites for XPath 2.0 and XSLT 2.0 and beyond; site and world licenses are 
also available).

That example that is freely available shows a single XML file representing 
two HTML files and how the XT extension function is used to create two HTML 
results with interlinked URLs between them.

I hope this helps.

......................... Ken


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