Displaying XML Using XSLT

XSLT stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation.

• XSLT is used to transform XML document from one form to another form.
• XSLT uses Xpath to perform matching of nodes to perform these transformation .
• The result of applying XSLT to XML document could be an another XML document, HTML, text or any another document from technology perspective.
• The XSL code is written within the XML document with the extension of (.xsl).
• In other words, an XSLT document is a different kind of XML document.

XML Namespace: XML Namespaces are the unique names .

• XML Namespace is a mechanism by which element or attribute is assigned to a group.
• XML Namespace is used to avoid the name conflicts in the XML document.
• XML Namespace is recommended by W3C.

XML Namespace Declaration:
It is declared using reserved attribute such as the attribute is xmlns or it can begin with xmlns:

• Syntax:

   <element xmlns:name = "URL">

  where

  • Namespace starts with the xmlns.
  • The word name is the namespace prefix.
  • the URL is the namespace identifier.
• Example:
  Consider the following xml document named Table.xml :-

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="rule.css"?>
   <tables>
    <table>
     <tr>
      <td>Apple</td>
      <td>Banana</td>
     </tr>
    </table>
    <table>
     <height>100</height>
     <width>150</width>
    </table>
   </tables>

  In the above code, there would be a name conflict, both of them contain the same table element but the contents of the table element are different.To handle this situation, the concept of XML Namespace is used.

• Example:
  Consider the same XML document to resolve name conflict:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <?xml-stylesheet type="text/css" href="rule.css"?>
   <tables>
    <m:table xmlns:m=""http://www.google.co.in">
     <m:tr>
      <m:td>Apple</m:td>
      <m:td>Banana</m:td>
     </m:tr>
    </m:table>
    <n:table xmlns:m=""http://www.yahoo.co.in">
     <n:height>100</n:height>
     <n:width>150</n:width>
    </n:table>
   </tables>

Xpath:

• Xpath is an important component of XSLT standard.
• Xpath is used to traverse the element and attributes of an XML document.
• Xpath uses different types of expression to retrieve relevant information from the XML document.
• Xpath contains a library of standard functions.
  Example:
  • bookstore/book[1] => Fetches details of first child of bookstore element.
  • bookstore/book[last()] => Fetches details of last child of bookstore element.

Templates:

• An XSL stylesheet contains one or more set of rules that are called templates.
• A template contains rules that are applied when the specific element is matched.
• An XSLT document has the following things:
  • The root element of the stylesheet.
  • A file of extension .xsl .
  • The syntax of XSLT i.e what is allowed and what is not allowed.
  • The standard namespace whose URL is http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform.

Example:
In this example, creating the XML file that contains the information about five students and displaying the XML file using XSLT.

• XML file:
  Creating Students.xml as:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl "href="Rule.xsl" ?>
   <student>
    <s>
     <name> Divyank Singh Sikarwar </name>
     <branch> CSE</branch>
     <age>18</age>
     <city> Agra </city>
    </s>
    <s>
     <name> Aniket Chauhan </name>
     <branch> CSE</branch>
     <age> 20</age>
     <city> Shahjahanpur </city>
    </s>
    <s>
     <name> Simran Agarwal</name>
     <branch> CSE</branch>
     <age> 23</age>
     <city> Buland Shar</city>
    </s>
    <s>
     <name> Abhay Chauhan</name>
     <branch> CSE</branch>
     <age> 17</age>
     <city> Shahjahanpur</city>
    </s>
    <s>
     <name> Himanshu Bhatia</name>
     <branch> IT</branch>
     <age> 25</age>
     <city> Indore</city>
    </s>
   </student>

  In the above example, Students.xml is created and linking it with Rule.xsl which contains the corresponding XSL style sheet rules.

• XSLT Code:

  Creating Rule.xsl as:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
  <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="/">
   <html>
   <body>
    <h1 align="center">Students' Basic Details</h1>
     <table border="3" align="center" >
     <tr>
      <th>Name</th>
      <th>Branch</th>
      <th>Age</th>
      <th>City</th>
     </tr>
      <xsl:for-each select="student/s">
     <tr>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="name"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="branch"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="age"/></td>
      <td><xsl:value-of select="city"/></td>
     </tr>
      </xsl:for-each>
      </table>
  </body>
  </html>
  </xsl:template>
  </xsl:stylesheet>
• Output :