I have a XSL stylesheet that I wish to compile into a dll using the xsltc.exe command. The issue that I am facing is that there is a common stylesheet that is being used and my styleheet is referencing that stylesheet using the xsl:include tag as shown below:
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"><xsl:include href ="../objectTemplates.xslt"/></xsl:stylesheet>
Is it possible to compile the referenced stylesheet into another dll and use it to compile.
So if I compiled the original stylesheet into "SomeStylesheet.dll" and the referenced stylesheet into "ObjectTemplate.dll"
Do I need to duplicate the code for the objectTemplates.xslt file into the first XSLT file and remove the xsl:include reference or I can still have separate xsl files for them and still use compiled XSLT files.
Any pointers would be really helpful.
At the date of writing this answer XSLT (1.0, 2.0 and the avilable first working draft of 2.1) , as defined in the corresponding W3C specifications, doesn't have the capability to use objects (stylesheets, global variables, ..., etc.) from an external compiled stylesheet.
That is, if a given XSLT processor can compile a stylesheet, this stylesheet can be executed only as primary stylesheet and its compiled form cannot be used imported/included by other stylesheets that are not compiled in the same compiled module.
If it is necessary to go beyond this, one could try writing their own extension functions to implement some at least rudimentary communication between any transformation and the templates within the compiled stylesheet.
Related
I'm currently building an XSLT stylesheet used to document other XSLT stylesheets in a series of folders and sub-folders. My code pulls out specific details about variables, functions, etc and renders it in an output format. The sheets being read are created by a 3rd party product. Most of them have an XSL extension but some of them are proprietary extensions. I have some files with a DTCBS extension but they are just XSL stylesheets.
I'm currently loading the content of these files into a variable using the XSLT function "collection" as follows:
<xsl:variable name="Collection" select="collection(concat('file:///', encode-for-uri(replace($filePath, '\\', '/')),'?select=*.(xsl|dtcbs|xml);recurse=yes'))" as="node()*"/>
The variable works just fine if I use XSL|XML. But if I include the DTCBS extension, the variable blows up citing "the supplied value is xs:base64Binary".
If I manually put the xml declaration line at the top of my DTCBS file, the variable works fine. Those DTCBS files are auto-generated without the declaration line so I can't fix that, nor can I manually edit them each time I want to run my documenter code.
From what I can tell, because it's not an XSL extension, and the XML declaration line isn't present, the XSLT parser thinks it's base64 when it isn't.
I'm using Saxon as my XSLT parser and the Saxon documentation says it uses file extensions and http headers to detect the file type.
Does anyone know if there is a way to force collection() to treat every file as an XSL?
Tried adding the XML declaration line in the DTCBS file. This did correct the issue but I can't do this in all cases as I am trying to automate the entire thing.
I also renamed the DTCBS extension to XSL and the problem went away as well.
As well as Martin's suggestion, you can register content types with the Saxon configuration:
processor.getUnderlyingConfiguration()
.registerFileExtension("dtcbs", "application/xml");
This has been available since Saxon 9.7.
Try to add e.g. content-type=application/xml e.g. '?select=*.(xsl|dtcbs|xml);recurse=yes;content-type=application/xml'.
The <xsl:import> and <xsl:include> elements seem to behave quite specific.
What I am trying to do:
<xsl:import href="{$base}/themes/{/settings/active_theme}/styles.xsl" />
I want to allow loading different themes for my application. I have a settings in my App which stores the "currently active theme" folder name in a xml node.
Unfortunately the code above won't work.
Does anybody know about a workaround to achieve what I want to do?
edit:
just confirmed with a XSLT guru via Twitter... there's no nice way of doing this. Easiest solution in my case will probably be to seperate frontend and backend stylesheets and load them individually to the XSLTProcessor...
xsl:import assembles the stylesheet prior to execution. The stylesheet can't modify itself while it is executing, which is what you are trying to achieve.
If you have three variants of a stylesheet for use in different circumstances, represented by three modules A.xsl, B.xsl, and C.xsl, then instead of trying to import one of these into the module common.xsl that contains all the common code, you need to invert the structure: each of A.xsl, B.xsl, and C.xsl should import common.xsl, and you should select A.xsl, B.xsl, or C.xsl as the principal stylesheet module when initiating the transformation.
What I am trying to do:
<xsl:import href="{$base}/themes/{/settings/active_theme}/styles.xsl" />
This isn't allowed in any version (1.0, 2.0, or 3.0) of XSLT.
In XSLT 2.0 (and up) one may use the use-when attribute, but the conditions that may be specified are very limited.
One non-XSLT solution is to load the importing XSLT stylesheet as an XmlDocument and use the DOM API to set href attribute to the really wanted value -- only then invoke the transformation.
In my stylesheet that I try to debug in XMLspy, I have the following line:
xsl:for-each select="xalan:nodeset($Order)//Lines"
When I try to parse it in XMLSpy, I get the error: 'function 'xalan:nodeset' was not defined. I use the external XSL transform, but I think it`s not enough and I have to define it within my stylesheet.
I`d appreciate help on how to call this function locally on my laptop from the stylesheet.
If you're not using the Xalan processor (and even if you are), replace xalan:nodeset() with the more generic exsl:node-set() - where xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common".
This is assuming you're using XSLT 1.0. As mentioned in the comments, no node-set() function is required in XSLT 2.0.
I've created .ascx user control and I'm trying to find a way for including it into xslt rendering. How can I do this? I'm doing it for Sitecore. I thought maybe create a placeholder, but placeholders cannot be defined in renderings. I appreciate any help you can provide.
It's not possible to include ASCX file into xslt file because: XSLT transforms XML to HTML or to XML or to plain text but not to ASP.NET pages.
You can include xslt file into ascx but not ascx into xslt file. The best way is to change your xslt file into ascx file, and to include there with placeholders or directly .
I'd suggest to avoid using XSLT.
They seem pretty easy to use, but it's really hard to refactor the code.
Well, it's not possible to call user controls(.ascx) directly from XSLT files. However depending upon what you want to achieve, you can call .net methods, called XSLT extension methods, from XSLT file. For instance, you may need to write code similar to below to call custom .Net GetData() method.
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:customObject="urn:yourNamespace">
<new-data>
<xsl:value-of select="customObject:GetData()"/>
</new-data>
...
Of course the type needs to be registered before it can be used. Type registration can be done into web.config or dynamically by calling AddExtensionObjectMethod of XSLTArgumentList class.
Sitecore offers XSLT extension controls too and unlike extension methods, it isn't a .net feature. XSL extension controls are XML elements in XSL renderings that correspond to .NET classes. For example, the XSL extension control corresponds to the
Sitecore.Web.UI.XslControls.Text .NET class. It will be consumed something like this in XSLT file:
XSL extension controls are standalone elements in the XSL code.
To register a custom type, add following to element in web.config:
<extension mode="on" type="NamespaceName.ClassName, AssemblyName" namespace="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" singleInstance="true"/>
Reference: http://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/64/presentation_component_xsl_reference_sc62-64-a4.pdf
is it at all possible to 'pre-proccess' in XSLT?
with preprocessing i mean updating the (in memory representation) of the source tree.
is this possible, or do i need to do multiple transforms for it.
use case:
we have Docbook reference manuals for out clients but for certain clients these need different 'skins' (different images etc). so what i was hoping to do is transform the image fileref path depending on a parameter. then apply the rest of the normal Docbook XSL templates.
Expanding on Eamon's answer...
In the case of either XSLT 1.0 or 2.0, you'd start by putting the intermediate (pre-processed) result in an <xsl:variable> element, declared either globally (top-level) or locally (inside a template).
<xsl:variable name="intermediate-result">
<!-- code to create pre-processed result, e.g.: -->
<xsl:apply-templates mode="pre-process"/>
</xsl:variable>
In XSLT 2.0, the value of the $intermediate-result variable is a node sequence consisting of one document node (was called "root node" in XSLT/XPath 1.0). You can access and use it just as you would any other variable, e.g., select="$intermediate-result/doc"
But in XSLT 1.0, the value of the $intermediate-result variable is not a first-class node-set. Instead, it's something called a "result tree fragment". It behaves like a node-set containing one root node, but you're restricted in how you can use it. You can copy it and get its string-value, but you can't drill down using XPath, as in select="$intermediate-result/doc". To do that, you must first convert it to a first-class node-set using your processor's node-set() extension function. In Saxon 6.5, libxslt, and 4xslt, you can use exsl:node-set() (as in Eamon's answer). In MSXML, you'd need to use msxsl:node-set(), where xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt", and in Xalan, I believe it's called xalan:nodeset() (without the hyphen, but you'll have to Google for the namespace URI). For example: select="exsl:node-set($intermediate-result)/doc"
XSLT 2.0 simply abolished the result tree fragment, making node-set() unnecessary.
This is not possible with standards compliant XSLT 1.0. It is possible in every actual implementation I've used, however. The extensions with which to do that differ by engine, however. It is also possible in standard XSLT 2.0 (which is in any case much easier to work with - so if you can, just use that).
If your xslt processor supports EXSLT, the exsl:node-set() function does what you're looking for. msxml has an identically named extension function as well (but with a different namespace uri, the functions are unfortunately not trivially compatible).
Since you are trying to generate slightly different output from the same DocBook XML source, you might want to look into the "profiling" (conditional markup) support in DocBook XSL stylesheets. See Chapter 26 in DocBook XSL: The Complete Guide by Bob Stayton:
Profiling is the term used in DocBook
to describe conditional text.
Conditional text means you can create
a single XML document with some
elements marked as conditional. When
you process such a document, you can
specify which conditions apply for
that version of output, and the
stylesheet will include or exclude the
marked text to satisfy the conditions.
This feature is useful when you need
to produce more than one version of a
document, and the versions differ in
minor ways.
For example, to use different images for, say, Windows and Mac versions of the same document, you might have a DocBook XML fragment like this:
<figure>
<title>The Foo dialog</title>
<mediaobject>
<imageobject os="windows">
<imagedata fileref="screenshots/windows/foo.png"/>
</imageobject>
<imageobject os="mac">
<imagedata fileref="screenshots/mac/foo.png"/>
</imageobject>
</mediaobject>
</figure>
Then, you would use the profiling-enabled versions of the DocBook XSL stylesheets with the profile.os parameter set to windows or mac.
Maybe you should use XSLT "OOP" methods here. Put all the common templates to all clients in a stylesheet, and create an stylesheet for each client with specific templates overriding common ones. Import the common stylesheet within the specific ones with xsl:import, and you'll do only one processing by calling the stylesheet corresponding to a client.