Hi All,
  Is it possible to have a stylesheet which will translate the incoming XML to a code snippet which contains JSTL taglibs. For example:

XSL (just for example)
---
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"
  xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
  <xsl:template match="/">
   <xsl:text disable-output-escaping="yes"><![CDATA[<c:out value="Will it showup in browser!"/>]]></xsl:text>
 </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>


Please note, c:out is a JSTL tag to output the value. Is there is any way we can add intelligence to XSLT compiler to parse this - basically it has to parse the translated contents using JSP compiler.

Thanks

Free

There are several options when generating JSP, or any other "not-quite-XML" syntax:

(a) use xsl:output method="text" and do all the serialization yourself

(b) use xsl:output method="xml" in conjunction with disable-output-escaping and/or XSLT 2.0 character maps

(c) generate pure XML and then postprocess it using some other technology

(d) write your own output method, if your XSLT processor allows this

(e) In the case of JSP, there is a pure XML syntax that's an alternative to the "non-XML" syntax using tags such as <%...%>.

I would recommend (e) as the cleanest way to go. None of the other options is very satisfactory.

See for example http://weblogs.java.net/blog/simongb...g_webap_6.html

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Hi Micheal,
  Thank you so much for all the info. I would like to further have your advice on a very common issue when an XSLT is used to drive the front end screens. I wanted to componentize the dropdown list into a JSP taglib - such a taglib will talk to database to get its list and generate the <select>...</select> HTML block. If i want to use such a custom taglib along with XSL, please let me know the best way you recommend here. Lets assume, the XML on which XSL is working has only the selected value of the dropdown list and the translated contents should have the entire list and the selected value being highlighted.

Thanks.

Free

You might be better off asking this on a JSP forum. I don't have much experience in this area.

Michael Kay
http://www.saxonica.com/
Author, XSLT Programmer's Reference and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference

Hi Micheal,
  On the other way round, can i have a custom style sheet variable which will talk to my cached data to pull out the list. I will store something like below:
    <list name="colors">
          <option id="1" name="red"/>
            <option id="2" name="yellow"/>
        <option id="3" name="green"/>
        </list>

and in my data xml will have :
 <question id="1" listref="colors" style="listbox">
        <text>Color list</text>
    <value>1</value>
 </question>

I dont want the code lists to be part of each every XML which is getting translated, rather i want the XSL transformer to do this particular task. Please let me know your suggestions.

Thanks for your time.



Free

Hi Again,
  Got a workaround - i used Xalan-J which will help me to introduce components in xsl which can talk to java. Any suggestions, welcome!

Thanks


Free