> I am playing around with the xml file that Picasa produces > when you export a > picture album. The xml file is pretty beefy depending on > the number of > images in the album. What I am wondering is what can be > done with it? I can > read the file, parse it, find some nodes, output some > things to the browser > all nice and formatted, etc... But isn't this what > XSL/XSLT is for?
Yeah, the purpose of XSLT is to convert (or "transform") an xml packet into another format. In some cases, this is for translation between different software systems which each have their own XML dialect (xml-to-xml) and in other cases it's to format the XML for a particular display, such as HTML for a browser or plain text for email for example... I've been getting more involved in XSL recently myself -- there's a lot of it in the RuleManager component I created for the onTap framework recently (the next issue of CFDJ will have an article on this concept) and I'm also using it to provide layout / skinning information for the blog sample application I'm creating. Matt Woodward wrote an article about XSLT in a previous CFDJ, and the tutorials on w3schools.com are decent (if not spectacular), as is the reverence at zvon.org: http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/default.asp http://www.zvon.org/xxl/XSLTreference/Output/index.html > Admittadly, I am new to XML/XSL/XSLT but thought this > might be a good way to > jump into the mix. My ultimate goal is to output the the > albums and control > the navigation through the album based on the values in > the xml doc. Am I > heading down the right road in looking at XSL/XSLT? You can of course always use standard CFML to generate output from an XML doc by parsing the document and looping over the xmlchildren... Although personally I'm becoming rather fond of XSL for creating displays when the data comes from an XML doc (as opposed to sql-queries as most CF pages are generated) and I suspect it's a bit more mechanically efficient (although I haven't performed any tests to back that up). For myself XSLT seems to have been pretty easy to learn, although the few places where I have been hung up have been _very_ frustrating (more so than I recall with CF or for that matter even JavaScript). Although now that I've found the tricks I really need most often (copy all attributes, selectively remove a single attribute or subset of attributes, etc.) I expect there will be a lot more XSL in my work now, in spite of the fact that the language (XPath primarily) still appears to need some work. s. isaac dealey 954.522.6080 new epoch : isn't it time for a change? add features without fixtures with the onTap open source framework http://www.fusiontap.com http://coldfusion.sys-con.com/author/4806Dealey.htm ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Find out how CFTicket can increase your company's customer support efficiency by 100% http://www.houseoffusion.com/banners/view.cfm?bannerid=49 Message: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=i:4:213356 Archives: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/threads.cfm/4 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/lists.cfm/link=s:4 Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/cf_lists/unsubscribe.cfm?user=89.70.4 Donations & Support: http://www.houseoffusion.com/tiny.cfm/54
