Re: [xsl] translate to XML using XSL into an HTML table

Yes very enlighting and thank you for the much
unexpected reply! :)


--- Steve <subsume@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Not to be ignored!
> 
> (even though I, being relatively new myself, know
> its overwhelming.
> you will see the light!)
> 
> On 8/3/07, Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > Oryann,
> >
> > You have already been helped very well with the
> code below, but the
> > discussion stayed all around using the same
> construct: xsl:for-each. You
> > stated that you are new to XSLT, so I take it that
> you are not very
> > familiar with it. In a later post you say that you
> are accustomed to
> > Perl, which is, as many general domain and
> scripting languages, an
> > imperative language, where you are used to be in
> charge yourself of
> > telling the compiler what to do and when, and XSLT
> takes it just the
> > other way around.
> >
> > Your approach below does exactly that: you layout
> a table, and you use
> > for-each to tell the compiler (xslt processor) to
> get a group of
> > elements and to do something with it. This is not
> wrong on itself, but
> > if your code will grow, you will find yourself
> having very complex and
> > hard to maintain structures, just like a nested
> for/next and if/then
> > would give you in an imperative language (unless
> you choose to use its
> > OO capabilities etc to get your code more
> readable).
> >
> > XSLT is a declarative / functional language. You
> literally *declare*
> > what your output should look like based on a set
> of rules, and then you
> > let the processor do the brainy stuff for you.
> What you need to know is
> > that the processor will walk the input tree of XML
> for you and you
> > declare templates where you say "if the processor
> encounters node XYZ
> > create a TD tag" and "if the processor encounters
> node ABC create a
> > TABLE tag". To control this flow, you can select
> what nodes the
> > processor is allowed to process on a given
> position.
> >
> > To illustrate this approach, let's take your
> example. Instead of writing
> > a for-each loop (it is not hard to imagine how
> your code will look when
> > you need several tables inside one another, with
> several for-each loops
> > etc), you can take the following approach, which
> needs a little shift in
> > thinking (read along with the comment lines):
> >
> > <xsl:template match="/">
> >     <!-- here comes your frameword for the html
> page -->
> >     <html>
> >         <head>.....</head>
> >         .... etc ....
> >         <body>
> >              <!-- now we tell the processor what
> main elements to grab -->
> >              <!-- these are children of the root
> -->
> >              <xsl:apply-templates
> select="PHONEBOOK" />
> >         </body>
> >      </body>
> > </xsl:template>
> >
> > <!-- declaring the table, which starts for each
> PHONEBOOK (only one) -->
> > <xsl:template match="PHONEBOOK">
> >       <!-- here comes the start of the table, you
> could put it in the
> > main, but this keeps it cleaner -->
> >       <table border="3">
> >            <!-- table header -->
> >            <tr bgcolor="lightblue">
> >                <th>FirstName</th>
> >                <th>LastName</th>
> >                <th>Phone</th>
> >            </tr>
> >           <!-- here we say to the processor: take
> these elements that we
> > want a rows -->
> >           <!-- I assume that you have added a
> <member> around each
> > first/last/phone, though this is not necessary -->
> >           <xsl:apply-template select="MEMBER" />
> >       </table>
> > </xsl:template>
> >
> > <!-- declaring the row, which the processor will
> automatically select
> > for each MEMBER -->
> > <xsl:template match="MEMBER">
> >      <!-- here goes the row definition
> >             all is a client of MEMBER now -->
> >      <!-- an easy way to create a way so you can
> point your browser
> >              to each member by its id or name
> (IE), by using
> > http://yoururl/yourpath#memberID -->
> >      <xsl:variable name="id"><xsl:number
> /></xsl:variable>
> >      <tr id="member-{$id}">
> >             <xsl:apply-templates select="FIRST |
> LAST | PHONE" />
> >      </tr>
> > </xsl:template>
> >
> > <!-- declare the cells, which is any node that is
> a child of MEMBER -->
> > <xsl:template match="MEMBER/*">
> >      <!-- here we select the value of the current
> node (.) -->
> >      <td><xsl:value-of select="." /></td>
> > </xsl:template>
> >
> >
> > Now, the above is finished. If you use that, you
> will get a neatly
> > rendered table. Why is this better than the
> previous approach? Suppose
> > that you want to but the text of the first name
> (FIRST) into bold.
> >
> > If you take your original approach, you would have
> to add a <xsl:if>
> > statement, which would even more deeply indent the
> already deeply nested
> > structure. In the new approach (the XSLT'ish
> approach) all you need to
> > is make a specific exception for the FIRST nodes,
> which you do by adding
> > an extra declaration, that is all. The processor
> "knows" that it should
> > take the exception case, instead of the generic
> case and will
> > automatically choose the correct declaration.
> >
> > This is what I meant by: let the processor do the
> thinking for you. This
> > is also the one point that many people find rather
> daunting when
> > attacking XSLT at first, but once understood it
> will make you go like
> > lightspeed!
> >
> > Here's what you do, just add this to the code
> above, and you are done:
> >
> > <xsl:template match="FIRST">
> >      <td><b><xsl:value-of select="."></b><td>
> > </xsl:template>
> >
> >
> > These concepts are very well presented in Jeni
> Tennison's tutorial
> > books. You can also check her website. Another
> good starting point is
> > the XSLT Cookbook (consider the second edition
> only) and Dave Pawson's
> > FAQ (search google for XSLT FAQ followed by your
> query and you get
> > there). If you want to get a bit further on the
> subject, you should
> > consider buying the authoritative definitive books
> on XPath 2.0 and XSLT
> > 2.0 by Michael Kay.
> >
> > Hope it helps! Happy coding!
> >
> > Cheers,
> > -- Abel Braaksma



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