By Jeni Tennison
Review by: Alex
XML seems to be everywhere, it’s what powers our podcasts, what RSS relies on and keeps AJAX on top of the web 2.0 revolution. One thing many people may not realise is that XML has its own stylesheet language, known as XSLT, this language differs in many ways from CSS as it enables the user to actually manipulate the structure and formatting of the page layout. XSLT allows the transformation of XML into images, PDF files, HTML and other output formats and because of the ever increasing use of the XML framework, XSLT has become a language which, if understood gives you almost limitless potential for your formatting. The book itself is an extremely comprehensive reference on all of the technologies you need to embrace to master XSLT and as it guides you through various examples the book you will learn how to master the language and be able to use it as a professional. The author of this book is herself a world class XSLT developer and she is able to put across the language in a way in which most people will be able to get a handle of quickly and easily. This book unlike many of its kind use the same project as its focus, to put a TV guide online, by doing so whenever the book moves to a new subject you can easily compare notes and code from previous articles. This method seems to give you a much greater understanding of the language then separate examples for separate chapters which may very well confuse readers. However as simplistic as it is, this book is 500 pages thick and not for the faint of heart. This book will take its fair share of shelf space (and brain space for that matter to memorise its contents) however as far as XSLT books go, this one is the best place to start for anyone new to the language.
The chapters in this book include the following... Chapter 1 introduces XML as a language and sets you up with the basics for establishing the most basic code. Chapter 2 shows you how to generate HTML from your XML files enabling this server side language to be able to be shown and formatted correctly in your browser. Chapter 3 is all about templates and how to work the basics of XSLT in your document. Chapter 4 explains the importance of conditional code and how to integrate this into your XSLT stylesheets. Chapter 5 is a chapter on manipulating atomic values such as Urls in your code. Chapter 6 explains variables and parameters which can be parsed by the interpreter. Chapter 7 details paths, sequences and nodes and how to work with them in XSLT. Chapter 8 then carries on from the previous chapter by talking about the generation of result trees through elements, namespace nodes, text nodes, attributes, branches and comments. Chapter 9 explains how to sort and group your code and results in an effective manner. Chapter 10 explains how to work with ID's, keys and numbering. Chapter 11 expands on previous topics by talking about named templates, stylesheet functions and recursion. Chapter 12 then goes on to show you how to develop XSLT based applications for the web. Chapter 13 details the importance of schemas and how you can integrate them into your documents. Chapter 14 gives a good, in-depth chapter on working with extensions and how to make your code backwards compatible (which is always useful in an ever evolving internet). Chapter 15 details how to make your XSLT dynamic. Chapter 16 is an entire chapter dedicated to SVG (scalable vector graphics) and tells you how to implement and generate them and the final chapter, Chapter 17 shows you how to interpret RSS with XSLT.
This book is suitable for the following types of people interested in website development:
- Established XML developers who want to manipulate their pages to work more effectivly.
- People who have a background in website development who wish to learn another language.
- Website developers who want an introduction to XSLT 2.0 who have no experience of the language.