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Re: [xsl] <quote>XSL is NOT easy</quote>

2007-06-26 00:25:18
bryan rasmussen wrote:
actually I find that most of the really bad code is written by programmers.

classical sins:
1. overuse of for-each. The worst ever: match on the root then do a
for each on the document element!! followed by a for-each of every
child of the document element, for-each of each of those etc. it was
for-each all the way down. Matching of attributes using for-each,
comparison of two attributes was done using for-each  down all
attributes until attribute with the name of the to be matched
attribute, save the value of that attribute into a variable, do a
for-each of parent::*/@* until the attribute to be compared with was
found then doing two ifs for if the value matches and if the value
does not match.

I submit that this was the most depraved and perfectly developed
example of a for-each fetish ever discovered in the history of XSL-T.


2.  I once worked with a computer science graduate/programmer, he
didn't just know mainstream languages but also Standard ML and Scheme.
He had been writiing XSL-T for more than a year, and his code was
littered with stuff like
<xsl:if test="count(record) &gt; 0"><xsl:apply-templates
select="record"/></xsl:if>


Another sin that I committed when I first started is the abuse of call-template, ie assuming some XML coming into a call template. That is just confusing.

I will add that XSLTs become more complex when the XML coming into them are poorly structured. If you have properly structured XML, XSLTs seem to flow and are simple, but if there is too little structure (or too much) then XSLTs and XPath becomes very difficult.

Also, Karl, what version of XSLT are you using? I think XSLT 1.0 can get confusing if you require recursion and you are not used to functional programming.

As for XSLT being hard to learn, it took me less than a week to get my head around XSLT and I am not exactly a gifted programmer. Our web designer (note, not programmer) can do simple XSLT work without too much difficulty and doesn't have too much trouble maintaining XSLTs.

--
Kamal Bhatt


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