learn xslt

If you play World of Warcraft then you have probably been to the wowarmory.com web site.

Here is an article explaining a little about how XSLT is used to accomplish a lot of great technical and business goals at that web site.

If you are a web designer, systems architect, or senior software engineer – and you harbor any doubts as to whether XSLT is useful to a heavily used commercial web site then read the article.

I have learned XSLT well enough to get things done at work, which is all I wanted to do. I still don’t have any extra love for XML, and I still think it would be easier to do transformations with a language like Perl, Ruby, or Python, but I’m not afraid of XSL transformations anymore.

XPath is a mini-language within XSLT used to describe what you are looking for in a node . It is not a complicated language¹, but it is a minor challenge. It is also vital for XSLT, so you can’t avoid it.

I have studied XPath enough that I can construct somewhat complicated paths without looking anything up in my notes. I can also understand what is being described in the really tricky paths that I find. It might take me a little while to break it down, but I get there.

My studies and practice at work have included a lot of XSLT, and my overall skills have definitely improved. Nevertheless, I am only willing to mark XPath as “learned”.

¹ It’s not complicated compared to regular expressions, but it might be more complicated than other mini-languages.

XSLT will put another feather in my cap for work usefulness. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of XML, but it would be stupid to avoid learning it.

i’ve done enough tutorials and troubleshooting-other-people’s-xsl that i can almost say i’ve learned it. it’s on my resume, anyway, which to me means i’d be comfortable with using it on a project even if i’m not a total pro at it currently.

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and render it using builder patterns.

I don’t buy into the XML/XSL ecosystem. It seems gratuitously complex and clumsy.

Do not let the nay-sayers stop you. XSLThas what it takes to turn complex problems involving XML inputs that get turned into different XML – or something else – trivial!

You do a small amount of work and it solves a big problem.

Filtering, sorting, grouping, transforming, reversing, substituting, converting – these are all XSLTstrong suits.

Lots of times, a conventional procedural language is not the right approach to an XSLT transformation problem. XSLTfits these situations like a glove.

The first step is learn how the XSLT template element works. Along the way, learn XPath expressions.

Read up on it and do it hands on. It does not take that long to write a short XSLT stylesheet. Sometimes the shortest ones are the most powerful. They can certainly give the most profound results. You will see when you get your first one working.

If you want to learn XSLT and you get stuck, hit me up.

My only sticking point is I will not do your school homework for you or write your project modules for you. If you want an explanation of what something in XSLT does or its purpose that is fine and I would love to help.

Makes it SOOO easy to separate HTML from code. The code can just focus on putting bits of XML together in whatever order is simplest, and then when you’re all done, you can just transform it to HTML, which is so easy to read with the XSL templates.

XSLT is the way of the future, man. We should all just be writing XML and converting it at load time.

Anyway – I learned what I needed to know about XSLT from reading the XML Pocket Reference by O’Reilly. Just carry it around until you understand!