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Question

Transforming XML into HTML (as opposed to xhtml)

Answer 1

A:

Ian, have you tried <xsl:output method="text">?

http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/el_output.asp

code4life 2010-06-30 01:30:31

Yes, the source parser complains if it's not given valid XML - this seems to be a fundamental constraint. The source XSL (which itself *is* xml) must be valid XML. And as soon as you begin adding < and > symbols, it assume they're the start of element names.

Ian Boyd 2010-06-30 02:41:25

Answer 2

+1 A:

Have you tried the output as "HTML"? Elements that shouldn't be self-closed in HTML are not (i.e.  , <img>).

If you still don't like how the XSLT engine is serializing HTML output, then you could set your <xsl:output method="text"> and construct the "HTML" that you want:

&lt;TR>&lt;TD><xsl:value-of select="col1"/>&lt;TD><xsl:value-of select="col2"/>&lt;TD><xsl:value-of select="col3"/>&lt;/TR>

which produces:

<TR><TD>col1<TD>col2<TD>col3</TR>

Mads Hansen 2010-06-30 01:41:08

Oh good lord. That's much worse than it not generating the `HTML` i want...the `XSL` has to be something *nobody* would want!

Ian Boyd 2010-06-30 02:35:50

i see the problem now. i was looking at XSLT as a transformation engine, that could take the source XML and turn it into whatever i wanted, filling in bits like a mail-merge. This is not the case: the **xslt** you give it must be valid **xml** (because xslt *is* xml). i can't go in there willy-nilly adding HTML markup - the parser doesn't know the difference between an `html` element and an `xml` element. XSLT is not as flexible as a mail-merge, and i cannot treat it as such. In the end, i need to bend my requirements to the limitations of the transformation engine.

Ian Boyd 2010-06-30 02:45:51

As much as i don't *like* the answer, it is the corret answer. Your answer cannot change the limitations of XSLT; only help to give the best possible workarounds. Accepted.

Ian Boyd 2010-06-30 02:47:55

@Ian-Boyd: There are no "limitations of XSLT" -- you can produce *exactly* the output you wanted -- see for example my answer.The mail/merge solution is also possible -- even if the form isn't well-formed XML -- one could just process it as text. This is even easier with XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 with the powerful RegEx capabilities they provide.

Dimitre Novatchev 2010-06-30 02:55:33

Answer 3

+2 A:

I believe the simplest thing is to just accept you're going to have closing tags in the output. While they might be optional, I believe most people would agree that best practice is to include them.

Is there a reason you really don't want optional closing tags in the output?

Re Update Two

There's no problem with this update. With method="html"   will be output as  :

XSLT (note  ):

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;
<xsl:output 
doctype-system='http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd'
doctype-public='-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN'
indent='yes'
method='html'
/>

<xsl:template match="/">
<HTML><BODY>
    <TR>
        <xsl:apply-templates/>
    </TR>
    <BR/> <!-- HERE -->
</BODY></HTML>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="item">
    <TD><xsl:value-of select="."/></TD>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Input:

<root>
<item>one</item>
<item>two</item>
</root>

Output (note  ):

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"&gt;
<HTML><BODY>
<TR>
<TD>one</TD>
<TD>two</TD>
</TR>
<BR> <!-- HERE -->
</BODY></HTML>

Porges 2010-06-30 01:41:23

You are correct; as long as the output type is `html`. Which is what i have. But then that discounts other answers that require output `text`. (That's why i included it as an answer, as a competing goal)

Ian Boyd 2010-06-30 02:39:39

Answer 4

+1 A:

Here's one way to do this:

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"&gt;
 <xsl:output method="text"/>

 <xsl:template match="/*">
   &lt;TR>&lt;TD><xsl:value-of select="col1"/>&lt;TD><xsl:value-of select="col2"/>&lt;TD><xsl:value-of select="col3"/>&lt;/TR>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

When this transformation is applied on the following XML document:

<t>
 <col1>1</col1>
 <col2>2</col2>
 <col3>3</col3>
</t>

the wanted result is correctly produced:

   <TR><TD>1<TD>2<TD>3</TR>

Dimitre Novatchev 2010-06-30 01:57:14

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Transforming XML into HTML (as opposed to xhtml)

See also

Update one

Update two

Re Update Two

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