Overview of XSLT |
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Understanding XSLT
EXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) is a style sheet language for XML. XSL Transformations (XSLT) is a language for transforming XML documents into other XML documents. XSLT is designed for use as part of XSL. An XSLT style sheet specifies the presentation of a class of XML documents by describing the way an instance of the class is transformed into an XML document that uses a formatting vocabulary, such as (X)HTML or XSL-FO.
XSLT can be used independently of XSL. However, XSLT is not intended as a completely general-purpose XML transformation language. It is designed primarily for the kinds of transformations that are needed when XSLT is used as part of XSL.
XSLT and XPath are closely linked together. For more information on XPath, refer to XPath. XSLT uses XPath to navigate through the documents that must be transformed. The prefix 'xsl:' is used for XSLT namespace. For more information on XSL, refer to http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform.
To further understand XSLT, refer to XSLT Architecture. For information on XSLT API(s), refer to Using XSLT API.
Benefits of XSLT
Through XSLT, you can present XML documents or data to the user in an attractive way in browser, mobile phone or PDF format, by converting the original data to the necessary output format. The advantage of using XSLT lies in its in-built XPath functionality that fragments any XML document into several sections to facilitate easier transformation.