Create a simple xml document
A. Creating a Simple XML Document
1. Open Notepad or any XML Editor on your computer system, create a file and name it CAFE.xml.
2. First define the XML version by writing “<?xml version=”1.0″ ?> ” in the first line.
3. The next line, “<?xml-stylesheet type=”text/xsl” href=”CAFE.xsl”?>”, refers to the type of style sheet used and the name of the file.
4. The structure of the XML file is simple. At the root is a structure called CAFES. This structure at the next level has a repeated number of child structures called CAFE. In turn, the structure CAFE has one attribute, CAFE_TYPE, and it has five elements:
– CAFE_NAME
– FOOD_QUALITY
– ENVIRON
– COST_RATING
– COMMENTS
5. The code for the entire file CAFE.xml is in the following image:
B. Formatting XML Using XSL
6. Now consider the XSL file, CAFE.xsl. The file accomplishes several tasks: (1) the XSL
file generates the HTML code that eventually runs on the browser. The XSL file has to create the necessary HTML tags for that purpose. (2) As part of the above, the XSL code creates a table that has the tabular headings in the first row. (3) Looping constructs allowed in XSL are used to read individual elements of CAFE in the associated XML file and then to output the values in the HTML table.
7. Preamble. The file begins with a preamble that defines the location of the XSL specification by the following line: “<xsl:stylesheet xmlns_xsl=”http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-xsl”>”. If it is not working, please try this line: “<xsl:stylesheet xmlns_xsl=”http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform” version=”1.0″>”.
And, remember to add “<?xml version=”1.0″ ?>” as the first line.
8. Template Match. The line: <xsl:template match=”/”> instructs the system to match the
XSL template right from the root stage of the structure described in the XML file (i.e., the entire structure of CAFES/CAFE is to be processed as per the XSL file).
9. The HTML tags for the file and for defining the table are achieved by the following code:
10. The header row of the table is defined by the code:
11. The XML file defines the overall structure of CAFES, which consists of multiple repeated child structure elements CAFE. The file CAFE.xml has five CAFE child structures. XSL provides the necessary language constructs to extract these values and puts them in an HTML format with the appropriate formatting. The “for-each select” looping construct of XSL is used to loop through the CAFES structure, and the XSL construct “value-of select” is used to fetch the values of the individual CAFE elements, such as CAFE_NAME and FOOD_QUALITY, and includes them in the table. This “foreachselect” looping construct of XSL acts the same as a WHILE loop in a computer program. The looping construct, such as a WHILE loop, is fixed in length, irrespective of how many CAFE child structures are involved. The looping code is as follows:
12. Now you should have keyed in the necessary code to display the comparison table. The last thing is to close up all the open tags:
13. Please remember that XML code is case sensitive. An upper cased letter is never the same as
14. Double-click on your xml document, and you shall see the following image on your computer screen:
