Sebastopol, CA--Choosing a recipe from an unfamiliar cookbook is
something of a die toss--you can't always be sure what the end result
will be. Few chefs are willing to trust their success to aleatory
probability (which can only work in your favor so often) and depend,
rather, on one or two trustworthy books from the collection on their
shelves, especially when trying new techniques. Likewise, when success
is favored over surprise, programmers also turn to their tried and true
resources. Users of Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations, or
XSLT, who would like to employ ready-made solutions to the challenges
they face, and master the technology along the way, will find that the
XSLT Cookbook
by Sal Mangano (O'Reilly, US $39.95) soon earns that
"trusted" position on their shelves.
Mangano's enthusiasm for discovering just what XSLT can do led him to
create this collection of practical recipes. Mangano explains: "XSLT is
gaining quite a bit of momentum and there is already a proposed version
2.0. However, I've found that a large number of developers who could
benefit from XSLT have yet to embrace it. Rather they use Java, Perl,
or Python with SAX or DOM extensions. Although this is a reasonable
strategy, there are many tasks that can be done quicker and better with
XSLT. I hope that this book will decrease the XSLT learning curve by
providing a set of ready-to-use recipes that can be customized for
particular needs.
"One of my goals in writing this book was to show how XSLT is relevant
to a wide variety of problems," Mangano adds. "I also want to provide
both novice and intermediate users of XSLT a one-stop shopping place
for some of the most commonly requested XSLT techniques. Finally, I
want to push the envelope of what one can do with XSLT so current users
can go even further and the unconvinced can join the fold of highly
productive XML transformers."
The "XSLT Cookbook" contains hundreds of solutions to problems that
XSLT developers regularly face. The recipes range from simple
string-manipulation and mathematical processing to more complex topics
like extending XSLT, testing and debugging XSLT stylesheets, and
graphics creation with SVG. Recipes can be run directly or tweaked to
fit a particular application's needs more precisely. Each recipe walks
through the problem and solution, with explanations of the choices made
and techniques used in creating that solution. Some of the topics
covered are:
- String manipulation, mathematical processing, and date-and-time
handling
- Interactions between calendar systems
- Selecting content in source documents and converting from XML to plain
text
- Efficient tree manipulation and XML document tweaking
- Using XSLT to query XML documents
- Generating HTML, C, and XSLT code using XSLT
- Creating charts and graphs with SVG and XSLT
- Processing Visio documents in XSLT
- Working with XML Topic Maps (XTM)
- Using XSLT to create SOAP documentation from WSDL
- Extending and embedding XSLT with additional functions
- Testing and debugging XSLT stylesheets
- Creating generic XSLT processors that work on many XML vocabularies
The "XSLT Cookbook" is an ideal companion both for developers still
figuring out XSLT's template-based approach who want to learn by
example, and for developers who know XSLT and want a collection of
quickly reusable recipes. Among the variety of XSLT books now
available, none has the explicit solution-oriented approach of this
Cookbook.
Additional Resources:
XSLT Cookbook
Sal Mangano
ISBN 1-596-00372-2, 654 pages, $39.95 (US), $61.95 (CAN), 28.50 (UK)
order@oreilly.com
1-800-998-9938; 1-707-827-7000
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