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Tutorial Reference

XSLT Syntax

How to structure XSLT style sheets with proper declarations, transform XML to XHTML, and link stylesheets to XML documents using W3C standards.

Let's discover the syntax through the transformation of XML to XHTML using XSLT.

Correct Style Sheet Declaration

The root element that declares the document to be an XSL style sheet is <xsl:stylesheet> or <xsl:transform>.

The correct way to declare an XSL style sheet according to the W3C XSLT is as follows:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

or

<xsl:transform version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

The xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" points to the official W3C XSLT namespace. If you use this namespace, you must also include the attribute version="1.0".

Transformation steps

1. Raw XML Document

Consider the following XML file called "books.xml" which is required to be transformed into a XHTML document.

books.xmlxml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<bookstore>
	<book category="children">
		<title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
		<author>J K. Rowling</author>
		<year>2005</year>
		<price>29.99</price>
	</book>
	<book category="web">
		<title lang="en">XQuery Tips</title>
		<author>Tom Nolan</author>
		<year>2022</year>
		<price>39.99</price>
	</book>
	<book category="web">
		<title lang="en">Learn XML</title>
		<author>Tutorial Reference</author>
		<year>2022</year>
		<price>9.99</price>
	</book>
</bookstore>

2. Create an XSL Style Sheet

Then, let's create the XSL StyleSheet with a transformation template.

Name it as "books.xsl" and save it in the same location of "books.xml".

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

<xsl:template match="/">
	<html>
		<body>
			<h2>The Bookstore</h2>
			<table border="1">
				<tr bgcolor="#6565d5">
					<th>Title</th>
					<th>Author</th>
					<th>Year</th>
					<th>Price</th>
				</tr>  
				<xsl:for-each select="bookstore/book">
					<tr>
						<td><xsl:value-of select="title"/></td>
						<td><xsl:value-of select="author"/></td>
						<td><xsl:value-of select="year"/></td>
						<td><xsl:value-of select="price"/></td>
					</tr>
				</xsl:for-each>
			</table>
		</body>
	</html>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Finally, add the XSL stylesheet reference to your XML document ("books.xml"):

books.xmlxml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="books.xsl"?>

<bookstore>
	<book category="children">
		<title lang="en">Harry Potter</title>
		<author>J K. Rowling</author>
		<year>2005</year>
		<price>29.99</price>
	</book>
	<book category="web">
		<title lang="en">XQuery Tips</title>
		<author>Tom Nolan</author>
		<year>2022</year>
		<price>39.99</price>
	</book>
	<book category="web">
		<title lang="en">Learn XML</title>
		<author>Tutorial Reference</author>
		<year>2022</year>
		<price>9.99</price>
	</book>
</bookstore>
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