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Re: [xsl] How to cope with the complexity of an XSLT program with thousands of template rules?

2022-06-02 09:05:49
If you have 1000s of templates for a single process you are probably missing 
some way to generalize the processing and reduce the number of templates, 
either through the use of functions to encapsulate some business logic or 
through the use of named templates and/or modes as Mike Kay suggests. At a 
minimum the way you have the templates organized can probably be improved to 
make the code easier to follow and work with.

For myself, I very much use Mike’s one-mode-one-module approach—it definitely 
matches my training from Java where there’s a close alignment between files and 
filenames and the purpose of the code in those files. While XSLT isn’t 
object-oriented, managing mode implementations in this way can make it more 
object-oriented like.

I also depend heavily on functions to move business logic out of the main 
template code (both for matches and for the processing within a template).

In response to Chris’ concern about a pipelined approach being too linear—I 
depend very heavily on this approach—I think it provides a clear separation of 
concerns in the code and generally makes the code simpler and easier to 
understand and update.

Cheers,

E.

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From: Roger L Costello costello(_at_)mitre(_dot_)org 
<xsl-list-service(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
Date: Thursday, June 2, 2022 at 6:46 AM
To: xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com 
<xsl-list(_at_)lists(_dot_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com>
Subject: [xsl] How to cope with the complexity of an XSLT program with 
thousands of template rules?
[External Email]


Hi Folks,

I have an XSLT program with thousands of template rules.

Ugh!

It's too much complexity for my tiny brain.

To help deal with the complexity I have implemented the following:

1. I split up the template rules across a number of files. Less template rules 
in a file seems to reduce the stress on my brain.

2. I make extensive use of ENTITIES. I have come to love ENTITIES! They are 
super helpful -- way less errors -- to define a value in one place and then use 
the value (via an ENTITY reference) in many places.

3. Hundreds of my template rules are empty, e.g.,

    <xsl:template match="(sid|star)/supplementalData">
        <xsl:param name="TRM_PAR_row" as="element(row)"/>
    </xsl:template>

To shrink things, I changed those empty rules using the XML empty tag 
abbreviation, e.g.,

<xsl:template match="(sid|star)/supplementalData"/>

That helps make the files a bit shorter. Shorter is better for my brain.

Question: what techniques do you use to control the complexity of a large XSLT 
program?

/Roger
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