Transforming XML Document Using XSLT with XML Control

Introduction:

I am explaining the concept of transforming an XML Document using a well-defined XSLT incorporated with an Asp.Net XML Control.

W3C recommend two different style languages:

1. CSS
2. XLST

XSLT stands for EXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations. The XSLT language transforms XML into a format interpreted by an internet browser. Generally we use XSLT when we want to do a transformation from an XML document into another XML document or convert an XML document into a HTML web page to create dynamic web pages.

Illustrate with an Example:

In our website we create an XML document. Here we will create a CollegeXML.xml document. It contains Student->Name and Branch like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<College>
  <Student>
    <Name>Sandeep</Name>
    <Branch>MCA</Branch>
  </Student>
  <Student>
    <Name>Raviendra</Name>
    <Branch>B.Tech</Branch>
  </Student>
 </College>

Now we create another document that is an XSLT document that transforms an XML document to a HTML document.

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
    xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" exclude-result-prefixes="msxsl">
    <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="College">
      <h1>Student Detail</h1>
      <table border="1" bgcolor="Green" width="250">
        <xsl:for-each select="Student">
          <tr>
            <td> <xsl:value-of select="Name"/> </td>
            <td><xsl:value-of select="Branch"/> </td>
          </tr>
        </xsl:for-each>
      </table>
            </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

Elements in XSLT:

Element	Description
<xsl:stylesheet>	It is define root element of style sheet.
<xsl:output>	It is define format of output created by style sheet. It is top level element.
<xsl:template>	It contains rules to apply when a specified node is matched.
<xsl:for-each>	It allows us to loop through multiple nodes that match the selection criteria.
<xsl:value-of>	It can be used to select the value of an XML element and add it to the output.

Table 1: Elements in XLST

Now we use an ASP.Net XML control to display this XLST information.

<asp:Xml ID="college" runat="server" DocumentSource="~/CollegeXML.xml" TransformSource="~/CollegeXLST.xslt"></asp:Xml>

Property of XML Control:

Property	Description
DocumentSource	Source of XML Document
TransformSource	Source of XSLT Document

Table 2: Property of XML Control

OUTPUT:



Note: Use CSS when you can, use XSL when you must.