Re: [xsl] Javascript for extension functions

[Abel Braaksma <abel.online@xxxxxxxxx>]

Colin Paul Adams wrote:
>     Abel> surely it will, esp. because most PHP programmers write for the
>     Abel> internet and this usually requires ecmascript/javascript
>     Abel> skills: it is familiar already.
>
> But is it useful?
>
> What will the programer be able to do that (s)he cannot do with
> xsl:function?
>
> If using the host language, I can envisage various answers, but Javascript?
>   

One thing that I dearly miss from the XSLT spec is a way to do a POST 
request (i.e., retrieve a SOAP or JSON XML document through web 
services). With JavaScript one has the ability to use XmlHTTPRequest 
which can be used for issuing a POST to the server and returning an XML 
object.

Another thing you can do is check the existence of an external resource, 
i.e., if you use unparsed-text-available() the function will fully parse 
the text and will only fail or succeed. It won't say, for instance, that 
the UTF-8 contains invalid characters. I happen to work a lot with 
external resources. Knowing the difference between the availability of a 
URL and the unparsability of a URL is of great value to me.

And I'm sure there are other things that cannot be done through 
xsl:function. I.e., try to process a ZIP file will be rather hard 
(meaning: impossible) in XSLT because of the � characters.

-- Abel Braaksma