Why use this?

[Html]

Hi there.I've only just heard of this, its like another style sheet language. Though what's the difference? Could some explain a little about it please?Thank you.

[boen_robot]

Despite XSLT being called like that, I would avoid describing it as such. Transformation language is more accurante. It transforms one kind of XML into another, often XHTML.If you think about it, it's a little more like PHP then CSS. In PHP, you have one source code, and what the browser gets is the HTML code, or whatever you have generated. In XSLT, it's pretty much the same deal, with the additional rule that the output can be only HTML, XML based (including XHTML) or plain text only *.What you gain as a benefit instead of using another XML transformation method, like DOM for example, is the ease of conversion. 20 lines of XSLT can often do more then what would take 60 or more lines in DOM environment. And the best part - since XSLT is written in XML, you can often migrate from one XSLT processor to another without much hassle, whereas if you use DOM, you're tied to whatever that environment is.But in any case, XSLT was mostly designed as a bridge between XML languages. You can keep your content in one XML based language like, say XHTML, and convert it to whatever other XML based thing you want, be it SVG, another XHTML, WML, XSL-FO, etc. And if a language for your task doesn't exist, you can always make it yourself, and use XSLT to convert your custom format to one (or more!) of those languages.And if you still need a practical use case, well... I personally often use it as a server side-less JavaScript-less include. The host that the site of my school is hosted on doesn't have SSI enabled, nor does it have PHP. Yet it's the shortest subdomain I could find, and it's just very memorable, especially for bulgarians (since the "bg"). I've used XSLT to contain the common stuff and add it to XHTML files that contain only the "per page" data. The files of course had to use "xml" as extension, since IE doesn't support XHTML. But if it did, I could have used "xhtml" as extension too.* With special setups, you could extend the plain text to form something that only something like PHP could do, but that's impossible without having something like PHP, thus eliminating the point in most cases.

[Html]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?><!-- Edited with XML Spy v2007 (http://www.altova.com) --><?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="cdcatalog.xsl"?><catalog> <cd> <title>Empire Burlesque</title> <artist>Bob Dylan</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Columbia</company> <price>10.90</price> <year>1985</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Hide your heart</title> <artist>Bonnie Tyler</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>CBS Records</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1988</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Greatest Hits</title> <artist>Dolly Parton</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>RCA</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1982</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Still got the blues</title> <artist>Gary Moore</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Virgin records</company> <price>10.20</price> <year>1990</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Eros</title> <artist>Eros Ramazzotti</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>BMG</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1997</year> </cd> <cd> <title>One night only</title> <artist>Bee Gees</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Polydor</company> <price>10.90</price> <year>1998</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Sylvias Mother</title> <artist>Dr.Hook</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>CBS</company> <price>8.10</price> <year>1973</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Maggie May</title> <artist>Rod Stewart</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Pickwick</company> <price>8.50</price> <year>1990</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Romanza</title> <artist>Andrea Bocelli</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>Polydor</company> <price>10.80</price> <year>1996</year> </cd> <cd> <title>When a man loves a woman</title> <artist>Percy Sledge</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Atlantic</company> <price>8.70</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Black angel</title> <artist>Savage Rose</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>Mega</company> <price>10.90</price> <year>1995</year> </cd> <cd> <title>1999 Grammy Nominees</title> <artist>Many</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Grammy</company> <price>10.20</price> <year>1999</year> </cd> <cd> <title>For the good times</title> <artist>Kenny Rogers</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Mucik Master</company> <price>8.70</price> <year>1995</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Big Willie style</title> <artist>Will Smith</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Columbia</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1997</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Tupelo Honey</title> <artist>Van Morrison</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Polydor</company> <price>8.20</price> <year>1971</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Soulsville</title> <artist>Jorn Hoel</artist> <country>Norway</country> <company>WEA</company> <price>7.90</price> <year>1996</year> </cd> <cd> <title>The very best of</title> <artist>Cat Stevens</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Island</company> <price>8.90</price> <year>1990</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Stop</title> <artist>Sam Brown</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>A and M</company> <price>8.90</price> <year>1988</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Bridge of Spies</title> <artist>T`Pau</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Siren</company> <price>7.90</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Private Dancer</title> <artist>Tina Turner</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>Capitol</company> <price>8.90</price> <year>1983</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Midt om natten</title> <artist>Kim Larsen</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>Medley</company> <price>7.80</price> <year>1983</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Pavarotti Gala Concert</title> <artist>Luciano Pavarotti</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>DECCA</company> <price>9.90</price> <year>1991</year> </cd> <cd> <title>The dock of the bay</title> <artist>Otis Redding</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>Atlantic</company> <price>7.90</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Picture book</title> <artist>Simply Red</artist> <country>EU</country> <company>Elektra</company> <price>7.20</price> <year>1985</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Red</title> <artist>The Communards</artist> <country>UK</country> <company>London</company> <price>7.80</price> <year>1987</year> </cd> <cd> <title>Unchain my heart</title> <artist>Joe Cocker</artist> <country>USA</country> <company>EMI</company> <price>8.20</price> <year>1987</year> </cd></catalog>This is an example from the site?http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/cdcatalog_with_xsl.xml

[boen_robot]

Yeah. So? What about it?It converts a custom XML format (created by W3Schools for the sake of demonstrating XML and XSLT) to HTML. What's the question?

[Html]

Hm...no question. Just as a example on show.