Xsl Companion

by Neil Bradley

A concise, comprehensive and accessible guide to the scope, strengths and limitations of the XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) family of stylesheet standards for XML, this book explains the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0201770830
• ISBN13: 9780201770834
• Release Date: August 2002
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional
• Length: 480 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.7" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Title and content match perfectly

For the XML developer this book is a perfect companion. It makes no real pretense to teach XSL, and if you're looking for such a book this is not it. What it does is provide developers of basic-to-advanced skill levels with tips, advice and clear explanations for using XSL in accordance with the XSLT standard, including XSLT, XPath and XSL.What makes this book valuable as a reference and 'cookbook' is the examples, stylistic approaches that are based on sound software engineering practices, and excellent use of illustrations to reinforce complex concepts, such as subexpressions, path directions and lexical elements of the XSLT family.Another point in the book's favor is the thorough coverage of all aspects of XSLT, from obvious solutions and advice, to highlighting subtle nuances and 'gotchas' that developers will encounter. The author does an effective job of transferring his knowledge in the form of the book to readers, and is the main reason why this book is an important companion to developers at all skill levels. Given the growing use of XML and related protocols - especially the XSLT sub family - this book is an important addition to the body of knowledge and is one professional tool that you should have on your desk or at least within reach.

Step-by-step instructions, sample code & numerous examples

Now in an updated and expanded second edition, The XSL Companion by ISL expert Neil Bradley covers all the features of the new XSLT language standard, which has been established as an addendum to the XML language expressly for transformation needs. Sections cover transformations using XSLT, XPath expressions, formatting with XSL, and a host of useful references. Written especially for the experienced XSL programmer looking to catch up with the latest evolution of this versatile and useful language, The XSL Companion offers step-by-step instructions, sample code, numerous examples and more to help the reader quickly and easily integrate new concepts into a fluid and dynamic program creation medium. ...

Best XSLT Reference Available

This is an excellent way to learn XSLT. The progression of chapters makes it both easy and exciting to read, in anticipation of learning about even more of XSLT's features.The book is well written, but there are at least a couple of typos in the examples. The description is generally clear enough that there will generally be no confusion (such as the ending " tag on page 132, instead of "" -- although the tag typo on page 127 causes more confusion).Filters, XPath expressions, and using named templates as subroutines are covered well, and many other useful tidbits are given, such as how to output in HTML format (no closing tags), passing comments through to the output file, and suppressing the output of unnecessary namespace declarations. Calling Java methods from XSLT is also covered.I especially liked the explanation of how to reorganize input into a completely different order in the output, as well as how to insert content from other XML files.The formatting language called "XSL" is also covered in detail in the last half of the book, if you have a need to learn it. Hopefully, browsers begin to support it soon.The only material that I wanted to see covered that wasn't is how to perform arithmetic expressions (multiplication, division, and modulus, for example, although addition and subtraction are supported and examples are given).This is the best XSLT reference that I've found, but beware that much of the examples do not work in Microsoft IE 5.0 (or even 5.5 -- even with the latest 3.0 msxml parser). There are several issues, one of which is that the "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" XSL namespace is not recognized and an older one must be used, instead). But the book references several parsers that *do* work with the latest XSLT spec, including XP and XT.This is really a great book on XSLT, XPath, and XSL!

Excellent book; short, to the point and well written

With index and all this book is just a tad over 300 pages. For the price you may be tempted to look to other books; I would urge you not to. After a in depth read of the first three chapters and a quick scan of the remaining chapters I feel this author is very capable of providing condensed information for the intermediate-advanced level developer. Any more than 300 pages would require unneeded "fluff" thrown in to attempt to make the book more useful to everyone, and would only frustrate the intermediate-advanced developer who's time is valuable.For my needs this book was perfect. It povided very detailed information on XSL and explained how XSL relates to XSLT and XPath, it also explained XQL. If you pick up a general XML book you usually will only find one or two chapters (two at best) discussing XSL. This book is intended as a companion to a general XML book (XML For Dummies, or this authors own XML Companion come to mind) this book assumes you know what XML is, what a DTD is, etc...I have searched for a book to teach XSL to perform complex filtering and grouping in the output, prior to reading this book I had read: XML for dummies (IDG Press) and Professional ASP XML (Wrox Press), this book goes into much better detail and is a pefect companion to both of the books listed above.The authors writting style is excellent, he provides many short examples of input/processing and output code in each chapter. He does not hold your hand and many of his descriptions have to be read a few times to fully grasp (XSL isn't as simple as you may think). Overall I feel very comfortable in saying this is the best book (and one of the only books) on the market to fully explain current XSL standards.

Cutting edge book for a cutting edge technology

The need for the separation of content from format in web design has been apparent for some time now. XSL is just the newest piece to be adopted. Combined with XML a designer is given great control over data flow and format within their web site."The XSL Companion" teaches the webmaster how to implement this language. I found the book to be clear and easy to understand. The code example were helpful. While I still consider myself an XML newbie, I think this book will remain "close at hand" for all my future projects.