[mailto:owner-xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com] On Behalf Of
Karl J. Stubsjoen
Sent: 29 February 2004 15:52
Subject: [xsl] Thinking Out loud - XML or XSL for boiler messages
The XML problem:
If messages are stored in a simple XML document, then I face
the challenge of how to insert additional information into
the XML when transforming. For
example: the messages are generic, and might look like this
in the xml source.. "Dear [first_name], we apologize in the
delay for blah blah.." where [first_name] needs to be
xml file
<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<resource>
<para>Dr <firstname/>, Please read this letter</para>
</resource>
xsl file
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform";>
<xsl:output method = "html"/>
<xsl:template match="resource">
<html>
<title></title>
<body>
<xsl:apply-templates select="para"/>
</body>
</html>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="para">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>
<xsl:template match="firstname">
Jim
</xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>
Will print out
<html>
<title></title>
<body>Dr
Jim
, Please read this letter</body>
</html>
Don't worry about the whitespace for now,
This method can be extended which takes in data via xsl:param, so u
would define an <xsl:param name="firstname"/> and pass the value to the
XSLT processor, then this would result in a simple amendment of
firstname matching template
<xsl:template match="firstname">
<xsl:value-of select="$firstname"/>
</xsl:template>
More modularity can be achieved by having these matching templates in a
separate xslt file and then use xsl:import or xsl:include to bring them
into your stylesheets.
This is just one simple way of doing it, there are a few other more
extensible methods, for example you could define all your data in
multiple xml files....
gl, Jim Fuller
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