Credit: Jon A. Morse (ST Sci/NASA)
Example Program
We demonstrate XSL processing through an example program that accepts
purchase information from users and creates an XML data file that
describes the purchase. The program itself is written entirely in
ordinary HTML and Perl-CGI -- it contains no XML or XSL at all. However,
it creates an output file that is valid XML. Each time a user fills out
the purchase form, their purchase information is converted to XML format
and pre-pended to the existing XML file, and so the XML file accumulates
the history of all purchases.
All the processing of the XML file, however, is done entirely through XSL,
which creates a variety of reports as well as modifications and updates
to the XML file itself.
The components of this example are:
- The HTML program po.html
which displays an HTML form that the user fills in to describe their
purchase.
- The Perl-CGI program that creates the XML data file that describes
a user's purchase po.cgi
- The XML file created by repeated executions of the HTML program by
different users. This XML file
contains the purchase orders for five different people.
- The resulting
XML file after it has been processed by XSL several
times to create new elements, such as "invoices" and "packing slips"
XSL Programs to Process the XML File
Note: the server used for these pages has a fully functional XSL
processor, and so clicking on the XML file that references the XSL
file displays the actual results (for example, an XML file that
references an XSL might have the following header:
<?xml version='1.0'?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="../Xsl/d0.xsl"?>
assuming that "d0.xsl" is an XSL file located in the "Xsl" directory.
However, this XSL processor is not yet
available on the Homer/Dante web servers, so you would need to process
the XSL files using the DOS command "XT".
The results of applying various XSL stylesheets to an XML file are
available through the following links:
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