2 Questions on XSLT for RSS Feed

Tachyon · June 14th, 2007, 03:21 PM

I just have 2 questions on XSLT (I'm a beginner).
1) How do you set the font to Arial
2) How do you make the <strong> tags work inside the RSS's <description> tag?
Example:
<rss version="2.0">
<channel>
<item>
<description><strong>Hello</strong></description>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

In Firefox I get <strong>Hello</strong> instead of "Hello" in bold.

Here's my file (XSL file below):
~~~~~~~~~~
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<?xml-stylesheet href="style.xsl" type="text/xsl"?>
<rss version="2.0">
    <channel>
        <title>Gears Online - Updates</title>
        <link>http://www.somewhere.com/updates/</link>
        <description>The latest stuff from Gears Online</description>
        <category>anime</category>
        <category>mecha</category>
        <image>
            <url>http://www.somewhere.com/test/gears-link.gif</url>
            <link>http://www.somewhere.com/updates/</link>
            <title>Gears Online - Updates</title>
            <description>Gears Online - Updates</description>
        </image>
        <language>en-us</language>
        <pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
        <ttl>1440</ttl>
        <item>
            <category>manga</category>
            <category>mecha</category>
            <description><strong>Hello</strong><p/>Added new stuff to the page today.</description>
            <guid isPermaLink="false">33484f18-1a86-11dc-8314-0800200c9a66</guid>
            <link>http://www.somewhere.com/fss/newstuff.html</link>
            <pubDate>Wed, 13 Jun 2007 15:00:00 -0700</pubDate>
            <title>New Stuff on the Page</title>
        </item>
    </channel>
</rss>

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">
    <xsl:output method="html"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:apply-templates select="/rss/channel"/>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="/rss/channel">
        <div>
            <h1><xsl:value-of select="title"/></h1>
            <em><xsl:value-of select="description"/></em>
            [list]<xsl:apply-templates select="item"/></ul>
        </div>
    </xsl:template>
    <xsl:template match="/rss/channel/item">
        <li>
            <a href="{link}" title="{description}"><xsl:value-of select="title"/></a>
            <em> (<xsl:value-of select="pubDate"/>) </em>
            <div><xsl:value-of select="description"/></div>
        </li>
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

bonekrusher · June 14th, 2007, 04:14 PM

To set the the font for the entire document you can use CSS embedded your XSLT

Code:

 <style type="text/css">
    body {
font-family: arial;
    }
</style>

To set output to bold or strong you can use the span element:

Code:

 <xsl:template match="/rss/channel">
        <div>
            <h1><xsl:value-of select="title"/></h1>
            <span style="font-weight:bold;>
            <xsl:value-of select="description"/>
            </span>
            [list]<xsl:apply-templates select="item"/></ul>
        </div>
    </xsl:template>

mhkay · June 14th, 2007, 04:56 PM

>1) How do you set the font to Arial

That's not a question about XSLT, it's a question about your target vocabulary. If you're generating HTML, then find out how to set the font to Arial in HTML, and then write the XSLT to generate that HTML. If you're generating some other target vocabulary, such as XSL-FO or SVG, the same applies. You can't start writing XSLT code until you know what output you want to produce.

2) How do you make the <strong> tags work inside the RSS's <description> tag?

<description><strong>Hello</strong></description>

There aren't any tags between the description start and end tags. The angle brackets have been escaped: you should only do this when you want them to be treated as text rather than as markup. I don't know why people escape markup to make it look like text, it's bad practice but it's sometimes done. It makes it very hard to process in XSLT. One workaround that works in some environments - but not Firefox - is to use disable-output-escaping which causes the serializer to turn the text back into markup.

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

Tachyon · June 14th, 2007, 05:43 PM

>>If you're generating HTML, then find out how to set the font to Arial in HTML, and then write the XSLT to generate that HTML.

<xsl:output method="html"/>
I want to generate HTML. How to "write the XSLT to generate that HTML" is my question.

mhkay · June 14th, 2007, 06:00 PM

Well, the rule is: if you know what HTML you want to generate, tell us, and we can help you generate it. If you don't know what HTML you want to generate, then ask for help on an HTML forum.

(It's not really a question of which forum you use. It's a question of getting the separation of concerns right in your own mind. Designing the HTML page is one activity, designing the transformation to produce it is a completely separate task. And as Dijkstra once said, you should never start writing a program until you know what output you want it to produce.)

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