XSLT is a Programming Language, Goddamnit XSLT is a Programming Language, Goddamnit

Dispelling Misconceptions About XSLT

By Karl Voelker

 What is XSLT?

XSLT is a programming language for manipulating XML.

That's it.

 Agenda
  1. Common objections and misconceptions
  2. Cool features
 ...but I'm not making a web site!

That's okay.

The output of an XSLT program doesn't have to be HTML.

It doesn't even have to be XML!

Let's see an example:

 Example: Tables
Web browsers are icky!

Luckily, there are plenty of stand-alone XSLT implementations:

 XSLT is hard to debug!

Debugging anything in a web browser is a chore.

So, don't debug in a web browser!

Command-line XSLT processors give helpful error messages.

 XSLT isn't a programming language!

Well, you're wrong.

XSLT is Turing-complete.

Should you use XSLT when there's no XML involved?

Probably not. But you could!

 Agenda
  1. Common objections and misconceptions
  2. Cool features
 Look Around You

An XSLT processor does have a "current location" in the document which changes as it goes along.

But, you can easily examine far-flung parts of the document with the various XPath axes:



	
		
foo
Get Outside

You're not restricted to one input document.

An XSLT program can obtain other documents by URL.

It can even determine the filenames to fetch dynamically.

 Dirty Tricks with Apache

If you configure Apache like this:

IndexOptions +XHTML

Then you can download directory indices and examine them on the client!

 Supertemplates

XSLT "templates" are more like functions than templates. You can:

 The End

Questions?