Intro

Step 1: Get out your lipstick

Lipstick on a pig
A transgenic fluorescent green pig bred by the National Taiwan University, Photo: Reuters
... unless the method of teaching and the common style of use for XSLT is radically changed to make it more accessible, XSLT will be relegated to niche status like SGML and other powerful technologies. - David Jacobs, 2002

Why XSLT should be part of your toolkit:

  • Unlike CSS, you can add new elements, or rearrange (XML + XSL = decorated XML)
  • Easy to learn and program, if you take a functional, and not a procedural approach.
  • Fast processor is built into the major browsers (IE, FF, Opera, not Safari!?)
  • XML isn't going away - browsers can convert HTML to XML. The new technologies of the Semantic Web. XSLT is the easiest way to convert one to the other.

Quick XSLT Refresher

XSLT rewrites markup for (re)presentation/consumption. This example creates a XHTML select.

Example

select.xml
1 2 ]]>
 +
select.xsl
]]>
=

On to the demos!

XSLDataGrid: Why another datagrid component?

The pure Javascript way

The pure PHP way (or serverside class way)

columns = array( "field1", "field2", "field3" ); $dg->data = $data; etc... $dg->render(); ]]>

XSLDataGrid: How it's different

  • Dynamic Demo
  • Tables on a page
  • Began as an attempt to use scriptaculous' sortable component for table columns
  • First implementation was a PHP class + Smarty template (which limited adoption among RoR headz)
  • Settled on a "microformat" approach to the component, based on Dojo's page scanner
  • Degrades to a good old table
  • Dual-DOM technique for client-side XLST (XML and HTML DOM)

This slide presentation is made with XSLT using AJAX-S

Upcoming and Cool: XSLT2, etc...

XQuery, XSLT 2 and XPath 2 are officially W3C Recommendations (Q1 2007) (W3C Rec.)

Upcoming and Cool: Freja and Formbuilder

Upcoming and Cool: M. David Peterson's AspectXML

  • Develop boiler plate code and test the XSLT engine to deliver only relevant CSS, Javascript
  • AspectXML is a framework for writing code dynamically to output versions for different platforms
  • Demo of end result using specific files: BrowserBasedXML.com

Upcoming and Cool: GRDDL (pronounced "girdle")

GRDDL is a markup format for Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects of Languages; that is, for getting RDF data out of XML and XHTML documents using explicitly associated transformation algorithms, typically represented in XSLT. Wikipedia

Other Links/Resources