Hello all,
I'm having a hard time understanding when and why I should use value-of
or apply-templates.
Assuming a simple XML document:
<root_element>
<head>
Name of website
</head>
<content>
<headline>
Interesting headline
</headline>
<body>
Even more interesting body.
</body>
</content>
<footer>
Copyright not reserved. Use as you please!
</footer>
</root_element>
I've written two XSL scripts to handle the above. The first one looks
like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";>
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="ISO-8859-1"
omit-xml-declaration="yes"
doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd";
doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"/>
<xsl:template match="root_element">
<html>
<head>
<title>
<xsl:value-of select="head"/>
</title>
</head>
<body>
<xsl:apply-templates select="content"/>
<xsl:apply-templates select="footer"/>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="content">
<h4>
<xsl:apply-templates select="headline"/>
</h4>
<p>
<xsl:apply-templates select="body"/>
</p>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="content/headline">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="content/body">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="footer">
<hr />
<p style="font-size: 11px;">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</p>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
And the second looks like this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";>
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="ISO-8859-1"
omit-xml-declaration="yes"
doctype-system="http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd";
doctype-public="-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"/>
<xsl:template match="root_element">
<html>
<head>
<title>
<xsl:value-of select="head"/>
</title>
</head>
<body>
<h4>
<xsl:value-of select="content/headline"/>
</h4>
<p>
<xsl:value-of select="content/body"/>
</p>
<hr />
<p style="font-size: 11px;">
<xsl:value-of select="footer"/>
</p>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
It's obvious that the second one is much shorter and perhaps also a bit
more "readable", but is it the right way? Is there even a right way?
I feel somewhat lost here. I'm sure there are strengths and weaknesses
to both methods - I just can't put my finger on exactly what is good and
bad.
I'm looking for a bit of enlightment on the XSL way of doing things.
Hope someone can help.
Sincerely,
Thomas