The Structure of a Stylesheet

• XSLT Stylesheets are XML documents; namespaces (http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml-names) are used to identify semantically significant elements.

• Most stylesheets are stand-alone documents rooted at <xsl:stylesheet> or <xsl:transform>. It is possible to have “single template” stylesheet/documents.

• <xsl:stylesheet> and <xsl:transform> are completely synonymous.

Note that it is the mapping from namespace abbreviation to URI that is important, not the literal namespace abbreviation “xsl:” that is used most commonly.

A Stylesheet

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform” version=”1.0″>
…
</xsl:stylesheet>

A Transformation Sheet

<eg:transform xmlns:eg=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform” version=”1.0″>
…
</eg:transform>

Document as Stylesheet

<html xmlns:xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform”>
<head>
<title>Silly Example</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Silly Example</h1>
<p>You’d probably use extension elements, or somthing more interesting in real life: 3+4 is <xsl:value-of select=”3+4″/>. </p>
</body>
</html>

XML document for city entity

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>



<!-- 

    Document:  city.xml

-->



<cities xmlns:xsi='http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance'

  xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation='host.xsd'>

<city>

    <cityID>c1</cityID>

    <cityName>Atlanta</cityName>

    <cityCountry>USA</cityCountry>

    <cityPop>4000000</cityPop>

    <cityHostYr>1996</cityHostYr>   

   

</city>



..........



</cities>

XML stylesheet for city entity

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>



 <!--

     Document:  city2.xsl

 -->



    <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"

    xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

    <xsl:output method="xml" encoding="utf-8" indent="yes" />

    <xsl:attribute-set name="date">

       <xsl:attribute name="year">2004</xsl:attribute>

       <xsl:attribute name="month">03</xsl:attribute>

       <xsl:attribute name="day">19</xsl:attribute>

    </xsl:attribute-set>

        <xsl:template match="tourGuide">

        <xsl:processing-instruction name="xsl-stylesheet"> 
 href="style.css" type="text/css"<br />

            </xsl:processing-instruction>

        <xsl:comment>This is a list of the cities
 we are visiting this week</xsl:comment>

           <xsl:for-each select="city">

               

<!-- element name creates a new element where the
 value of the attribute <tt>name</tt> sets name of 

the new element.  Multiple attribute sets can
 be used in the same element -->

               

<!-- use-attribute-sets attribute adds all the
 attributes declared in attribute-set from above -->



               <xsl:element name="cityList"  use-attribute-sets="date">

                   <xsl:element name="city">

                         <xsl:attribute name="country">

                         <xsl:apply-templates select="country"/>  </xsl:attribute>

                         <xsl:apply-templates select="cityName"/>

                   </xsl:element>

                   <xsl:element name="details">Will write up a 
one page report of the trip</xsl:element>

               </xsl:element>

          </xsl:for-each>

       </xsl:template>

   </xsl:stylesheet>

• Although the output method is set to “xml“, since there is no <html> element as the root of the result tree, it would default to XML output.

• attribute-set is a top-level element that creates a group of attributes by the name of “date.” This attribute set can be reused throughout the stylesheet. The element attribute-set also has the attribute use-attribute-sets allowing you to chain together several sets of attributes.

• The processing-instructionproduces the XML stylesheet processing instructions.

• The element comment creates a comment in the result tree

• The attribute element allows you to add an attribute to an element that is created in the result tree.