invoking outside programs from XSLT?

[Keith Davies]

Hi All,

is there a (reasonably) portable way in XSLT to invoke an external
program? I've got data I want to represent as a number of charts.
I can write SVG easily enough (and they look nice in PDF), but I
want to produce PNG for inclusion on a website.

Can I invoke a program from inside XSLT? I can include instructions
in the Makefile to invoke the program to process the SVG, but I might
prefer to do it directly from XSLT.

I'm using SAXON 8.2b, for what it's worth... I could use a SAXON
extension if needed (and it exists... I suspect it does), but if
there's a more portable way I'd rather do that.


Keith

 

[David Carlisle]

Hi All,

is there a (reasonably) portable way in XSLT to invoke an external
program? I've got data I want to represent as a number of charts.
I can write SVG easily enough (and they look nice in PDF), but I
want to produce PNG for inclusion on a website.

Can I invoke a program from inside XSLT? I can include instructions
in the Makefile to invoke the program to process the SVG, but I might
prefer to do it directly from XSLT.

I'm using SAXON 8.2b, for what it's worth... I could use a SAXON
extension if needed (and it exists... I suspect it does), but if
there's a more portable way I'd rather do that.

You can use an extension function (saxon allows you to escape to java
for example) an alternative that is in some sense more portable is to
use the document() function with a URI that points to a server and then
arrange that your program runs on the server using cgi-bin script or
some other technology of your choice.

David