General question about XSLT capabilities

[Grant Robertson]

Can an XML Stylesheet Language Transform take data that is spread out in
multiple different XML files and not necessarily in proper order,
rearrange that data into it's proper order and then compile all of that
into a series HTML web pages for presentation? Or would I need to write a
custom program for that kind of thing?

Thanks

 

[Richard Tobin]

Can an XML Stylesheet Language Transform take data that is spread out in
multiple different XML files and not necessarily in proper order,
rearrange that data into it's proper order and then compile all of that
into a series HTML web pages for presentation?

Probably. Reading from multiple files is supported with the
document() function. Writing multiple files in XSLT 1.0 requires an
extension of some kind, such as <exsl:document> (see
http://www.exslt.org/); slternatively you could write a single
document and split it up somehow afterwards.

-- Richard

 

[Martin Honnen]

Can an XML Stylesheet Language Transform take data that is spread out in
multiple different XML files and not necessarily in proper order,
rearrange that data into it's proper order and then compile all of that
into a series HTML web pages for presentation? Or would I need to write a
custom program for that kind of thing?

XSLT 2.0 can do both, read from multiple files using the document function
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#document>
and create multiple result files using the xsl:result-document instruction
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#creating-result-trees>
Saxon 8 <http://www.saxonica.com> is an XSLT 2.0 processor available for
Java and for the Microsoft .NET framework.

 

[Joe Kesselman]

Can an XML Stylesheet Language Transform take data that is spread out in
multiple different XML files and not necessarily in proper order,
rearrange that data into it's proper order and then compile all of that
into a series HTML web pages for presentation? Or would I need to write a
custom program for that kind of thing?

Use the document() function to fetch their contents.

Reordering and so on is built into XSLT.

Multiple outputs is the tricky part. Basic XSLT 1.0 doesn't do that, but
you could achieve this by running several stylesheets (or one stylesheet
with different parameters each time). The EXSLT extension library, which
many-but-not-all XSLT processors support, adds the ability to "redirect"
output to additional documents and would let you do this in a single
stylesheet execution. XSLT 2.0 adds this capability as a standard part
of the language.

 

[Grant Robertson]

XSLT 2.0 can do both, read from multiple files using the document function
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#document>
and create multiple result files using the xsl:result-document instruction
<http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt20/#creating-result-trees>
Saxon 8 <http://www.saxonica.com> is an XSLT 2.0 processor available for
Java and for the Microsoft .NET framework.

Awesome! All I need to know for now is if it is possible. Now I know
where to focus my energies when the time comes.

Thanks to everyone who responded so quickly.