A good resource for learning xsl?

Question

Hey all

Know a bit of XML but am struggling to get my head around XSL - just wondering if anybody knows of any good resources to get me up to par quickly. Websites or books etc.

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

There is always w3c

http://www.w3.org/standards/xml/

and I have always found this useful

http://www.w3schools.com/

Answer 2

Yes http://w3schools.com provide good tutorials related to XML/XSL.

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

They also provide try it yourself options which are really helpful while learning.

http://www.w3schools.com/xsl/tryxslt.asp?xmlfile=cdcatalog&xsltfile=cdcatalog

Some more tutorials links to begin with are :

http://www.devguru.com/features/tutorials/xml/beginning_xml.asp

http://nwalsh.com/docs/tutorials/xsl/xsl/slides.html

http://www.astahost.com/info.php/Xslt-Beginner_t11054.html

http://www.learn-xslt-tutorial.com/

Answer 3

This book has great examples of using XSLT for many purposes and I've found it quite useful.

An easier starting point might be this book:

I haven't actually read the second, and am not sure it gives more info than can be gotten the tutorials at http://w3schools.com, which are certainly worth looking at as others have suggested.

Answer 4

Start with w3schools, they are good for beginners.

Stop looking at w3schools once you're a bit more comfortable, they aren't terribly reliable. They can steer you in the right direction at first, but can steer you wrong when you need an accurate reference on more obscure behaviour.

Answer 5

Indespensable (even for the intermediate XSLT programmer) is Dave Pawson's XSLT FAQ:

http://www.dpawson.co.uk/xsl/sect2/sect21.html

It's kind of a best of from the XSLT mailing list with lots of questions every XSLT newbie will most likely encounter.

Answer 6

T U T O R I A L S:

  Some tutorials by Norman Walsh:

1. On XSLT 1.0
2. On XSLT 2.0/XPath 2.0

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  Link to More tutorials

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B O O K S

The classic books of Michael Kay on XSLT 1.0:

      XSLT: Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)

and on XSLT 2.0 / XPath 2.0

      XSLT 2.0 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer)

and

      XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer) :

The books by Jeni Tennison:

      Beginning XSLT

      Beginning XSLT 2.0: From Novice to Professional

      XSLT and XPath On The Edge, Unlimited Edition

And Sal Mangano's book:

      XSLT Cookbook, Second Edition

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Blogs:

1. Michael Kay
2. David Carlisle
3. Jeni Tennison
4. Dimitre Novatchev

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S I T E S

1. xsl-list archives
2. Dave Pawson's XSLT-FAQ
3. FXSL -- the Functional Programming Library for XSLT

Answer 7

Two good tutorials:

XSLT - http://www.zvon.org/comp/r/tut-XSLT_1.html#

XPath - http://www.zvon.org/comp/r/tut-XPath_1.html

Answer 8

At the risk of getting flamed for it, I'm going to suggest to just read the XSLT 1.0 spec. Note that in general I am not a a huge fan of the W3C specs, and typically I would not recommend anyone a W3C spec as a starting point, but I want to make an exception for XSLT: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt

Having said that, if this is your first taste of XSLT, then here are some suggestion on the what to try first:

• xsl:template with simple XPath selectors (match="foo", match="/foo", match="//foo", match="foo[@bar]")
• xsl:value-of with similar simple XPath selectors
• xsl:apply-templates
• xsl:for-each
• xsl:if
• xsl:choose
• xsl:text
• named templates with xsl:template
• xsl:template and xsl:apply-templates with mode
• xsl:key
• xsl:output variations

Once you got the hang of that, you will find that XSLT might not have given you everything you needed. In that case, you might want to check EXSLT (standard XSLT extensions supported by many implementations at http://exslt.org/. Also check http://www.jenitennison.com/, since it has a lot of useful information on how to achieve more complicated things. (Like grouping. Notoriously complicated in XSLT 1.0.)

And if that doesn't work out, you can always create your own extension elements or functions. With Xalan, it's not all that hard.

Answer 9

I found "Inside XSLT" by Steven Holzner helpful.

Answer 10

Helpful Online tutorial

http://www.xmlfiles.com/xsl