Dreamweaver Article

XSL Overview

As you might recall from my previous article, XML Overview, XML was designed to carry data. However, the majority of web applications are designed with the end user in mind. Therefore, information should be presented in a readable format. This is where XSL comes in: it takes the data from the XML trees and processes it to produce intelligible output. Of course, you can use Perl, Java, or PHP to work your way around transforming XML documents. However, as XML becomes more and more mainstream, you'll have to get a good grip of XSL and its functioning principles.

Fortunately, Dreamweaver 8 takes a visual approach to XSL transformations, helping you process XML-based data with no hand-coding at all. In order to understand how XML and XSL can be used together to process and display information, this article reviews XSL and some of its real-life applications. I will cover basic XSL syntax rules, give you some examples of how to use XSL to style your data, and explain the difference between a server-side and a client-side transformation.

Requirements

To complete this tutorial you will need to install the following software and files:

Dreamweaver MX 2004 or later (Optional)

• Try
• Buy

• To complete the examples in this tutorial, it is recommended that you have Dreamweaver installed. However, you can use any other text editor, but you will not be able to take advantage of the native XSL support offered by Dreamweaver.
• Previous knowledge of XSL is not required. This article is intended to explain how you can use XSL to process XML data.
• Previous knowledge of HTML, WWW, and building web pages is recommended.

Tutorials and sample files:

• xsl_overview_samples.zip (ZIP, 3K)

You have read my previous article: XML Overview.

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