"Hello world!" Example of XSLT

XML Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) Introduction

∟"Hello world!" Example of XSLT

This section provides a tutorial example on how to a first XSLT stylesheet, hello.xls, to transform the original XML document, hello.xml. The Internet Explorer (IE) can be used as XSLT transformation program to apply the stylesheet and generate the resulting document.

Here is the XSLT stylesheet file, hello.xsl, that defines how information in my hello.xml should be transformed:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
   xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
 <xsl:template match="p">Hello world! - From hello.xsl.</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Note that:

The root element is named as "xsl:stylesheet".
All the element names are prefixed with "xls:".
Prefix "xls:" is associated with the XML name space: "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform". This is done by the attribute, "xmlns:xsl" in the root element.

In order to link hello.xsl to hello.xml, I have to modify it as hello_xsl.xml:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="hello.xsl"?>
<p>Hello world!</p>

Note that a new processing instruction "xml-stylesheet" is added to the XML file to tell the processing applications to look for style instructions in "hello.xsl".

The next question is then: "Do we have an application that can process this XML file based on the style instructions specified in the XSL file?"

The answer is yes. There are many commercial tools that supports XML XSL processing functionalities. But you also use some open source tools like Notepad++ and Atom as XML/XSL editors and processors.

Or you can write a simple program to as an XML XSL processor. XSLTransformer.java presented later in the book is a good example. If you run it on hello_xsl.xml, you will get the following output:

Hello world! - From hello.xsl.

Note that:

The element "p" in hello.xml was transformed into a new text string by Firefox.
Firefox first transformed the content in hello_xsl.xml, kept the result in memory, then displayed the result on the screen.

If you work with XML Stylesheet frequently, you need to have some good tools as XML XSL processors with command line interface or graphical user interface.

Here is a list of XML XSL processors I have used.

Notepad++ - Needs to install XML Tools Plugin.
Atom - Needs to install atom-xsltransform package.
Mozilla Firefox - Supports loading XSL files with "http:" protocol only. Local "file:" protocol not allowed.
Google Chrome - Supports loading XSL files with "http:" protocol only. Local "file:" protocol not allowed.
Apple Safari - Supports loading XSL files with "http:" protocol only. Local "file:" protocol not allowed.
Microsoft Edge - Supports loading XSL files with "http:" protocol only. Local "file:" protocol not allowed.