JSP/.NET XML - simple client to display html

Question

Hi,

I am fairly proficient in PHP, but just starting out in ASP.Net and JSP/Java

I would like to learn JSP/ASP.NET XML to HTML transformation with some simple practical examples. Im not looking to learn how to edit XML, just displaying it, but im having trouble finding definitive examples/tutorials.

Ive spent quite a while studying JSP/ASP.NET but quickly find how vast they are and how many different ways there are to do this (quite frankly im a bit overwhelmed). I would be really grateful for advice before I embark upon this journey (and perhaps I will be saved from going in the completely wrong direction). If there are any tutorials or especially example apps you could point me towards this would really help (i like to do hands on learning)

For this I expect I need to do the following:

1) Set up a server for each technology (im using Tomcat and IIS at the moment - are these the best?)

2) Use some parameter based routing system (MVC?, but this is most surely overkill for me)

3) Parse the XML and create some variables/objects

4) Display the HTML (Use template libraries (JSTL? not sure for ASP.NET))

Any tutorials/example apps you could point me towards to help me through the above steps will be truly appreciated.

Thankyou

Ke

Answer 1

By the sounds of your skillset, carefully working through this developerworks tutorial on JSTL looks like a good place for you to start. It does cover the XML handling libs around part 4, and it'll also help you avoid the mistake of using scriptlets where JSTL would give cleaner, less error-prone and much more readable code.

You'll also most likely want IDE support, so that you get documentation, syntax checking and autocomplete. I personally use Eclipse (The EE download will have everything you need and more) but NetBeans might be the most straightforward to get your started.

Tomcat will be fine to get you started, but these IDEs tend to have build in web containers to save you time in deploying and testing.