XML Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples - v5.25, by Herong Yang
How the Transformation Process Gets Started
This section describes transformation process starting logic - an XSL processor will automatically start to perform transformation on the root element.
After learned "template" and "apply-templates" elements, we can now look at how the XSLT transformation process gets started, and in which order elements in the source XML document get processed.
Let's go back to our "Hello world!" XSLT example. Here is the source XML document, hello_xsl.xml:
<?xml version="1.0"?> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="hello.xsl"?> <p>Hello world!</p>
Here is the XSLT stylesheet, hello.xsl:
<?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>
Here is the transformation result document:
Hello world! - From hello.xsl.
Question: What is the trigger to perform transformation on element "p"? Or who requested to apply transformation template on element "p"? My guess is that the XSLT engine, or XSL processor, automatically starts the transformation on the root element, which is "p" in our example.
Rule: XSL processors automatically start to apply transformation on the root element. The following XSL statements is not needed, also not allowed, directly under the "stylesheet" element:
<xsl:apply-templates select="root_element_name"/>
Table of Contents
Introduction of XML (eXtensible Markup Language)
DOM (Document Object Model) Programming Interface
SAX (Simple API for XML) Programming Interface
DTD (Document Type Definition) Introduction
Validating an XML Document against the Specified DTD Document Type
XSD (XML Schema Definition) Introduction
Validating XML Documents Against Specified XML Schemas
XSL (Extensible Stylesheet Language) Introduction
►XSLT (XSL Transformations) Introduction
What Is XSLT (XSL Transformations)
"stylesheet" - The Stylesheet Declaration Element
"template" - The Template Declaration Element
Including Literal XML Elements in Templates
"apply-templates" - The Child Transformation Call Element
►How the Transformation Process Gets Started
Default Transformation Template
XML Element Transformation Chains
XML Element Transformation Chains - Complex Example
XSLT Elements as Programming Statements
Control and Generate XML Element in the Result
PHP Extensions for XML Manipulation
Processing XML with Python Scripts
XML Tools Plugin for Notepad++
XML Plugin Packages for Atom Editor