Easy Introduction to XSLT Chapter One: the concept of XSLT

The concept of 1.XSLT

1.1 What is XSLT

1.2 Why do you use XSLT

The history of 1.3 XSLT

1.4 What is XPath

1.5 XSLT and CSS comparisons

1.6 XSLT and IE5

The concept of 1.XSLT

Let's first clarify the concept that you may have heard of XSL (extensible Stylesheet Language), that XSL and the XSLT we're talking about are the same in the narrow sense, and that XSLT is more restrictive according to the standards of the world's standard, So we use the XSLT method uniformly in the article. The specific relationship between them will be described below.

1.1 What is XSLT

The English standard name for XSLT is extensible Stylesheet Language transformation. According to the specifications of the HTTP://WWW.W3.ORG/TR/XSLT, the first design XSLT was designed to help convert XML documents (document) to other documents. But with development, XSLT has not only been used to convert XML to HTML or other text formats, but a more comprehensive definition should be:

XSLT is a language used to transform the structure of XML documents.

1.2 Why do you use XSLT

As we already know, XML is a simple and standard way of exchanging raw data between computer programs. Its success does not lie in its easy to be written and read by people, and more importantly, it fundamentally solves the information exchange between application systems. Because XML meets two basic requirements:

(1). Separating the data from the form of expression. Like the weather information can be displayed on different devices, TV, cell phone or other.

(2). Transmission of data between different applications. The growing demand for E-commerce data exchange has made this increasingly urgent.

In order to make the data easy for people to read and understand, we need to display or print the information, such as turning the data into an HTML file, a PDF file, or even a sound; Similarly, in order for the data to fit into different applications, we must have the ability to convert one data format to another data format, For example, the requirement format may be a text file, an SQL statement, an HTTP message, a certain sequence of data calls, and so on. And XSLT is the language we use to implement this conversion function. converting XML to HTML is the main function of XSLT at the moment.

The history of 1.3 XSLT

Like many other XML family members, XSLT was drafted and developed by the consortium. Its main development process is as follows:

.1995 proposed by James Clark;

. The August 1997 official proposal was XSL;

. A demand summary was completed by Norman Walsh in May 1998;

. August 18, 1998 the release of the XSL draft;

. November 16, 1999 the official release of the XSL 1.0 recommended version.

Currently, XSLT is still evolving rapidly, and XSLT1.1 's draft is already visible on the Web site (http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt11).