HELP: XML/XSLT/ASP.NET Calendar Control

kwilliams · May 2nd, 2008, 10:54 AM

Can someone give me the basics or point me in the right direction on how I can create an ASP.NET calendar control within a XML/XSLT transformation? I'd really appreciate any help. Thanks.

KWilliams

samjudson · May 2nd, 2008, 02:05 PM

<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:asp="http://microsoft.com/2005/aspnet">

<asp:Calendar runat="server" />

</xsl:stylesheet>

/- Sam Judson : Wrox Technical Editor -/

joefawcett · May 3rd, 2008, 03:24 AM

XSLT takes input, usually XML and outputs a differently formatted file. If you show your input and desired output then we can probably help. There is nothing special about creating an ASP calendar control as opposed to creating a COBOL data record.
Having said that producing ASP.NET files does have some inherent difficulties, the files are pseudo-XML at best so you often need to use the text output directive.

I have asked Microsoft if it is possible to have a pure XML representation of ASP.NET files whereby such constructs as <%# %> are replaced by elements such as <asp:BindingData/>. Don't hold your breath.

--

Joe (Microsoft MVP - XML)

kwilliams · May 5th, 2008, 09:38 AM

samjudson:

I tried your suggestion, but nothing showed up on the page. When I looked at the source code, this is what I saw:
<asp:Calendar runat="server" xmlns:asp="http://microsoft.com/2005/aspnet" />
<br xmlns:asp="http://microsoft.com/2005/aspnet" />

I also tried using xmlns:asp="remove" instead of xmlns:asp="http://microsoft.com/2005/aspnet" per the suggestion of others, but that had a similar non-working result:
<asp:Calendar runat="server" xmlns:asp="remove" />
<br xmlns:asp="remove" />

***********************************
joefawcett:

Thanks for the info. Per your suggestion, here's three different XSLT stylesheets that I've tried without success:

XSLT doc #1:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:asp="remove">
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <asp:Calendar runat="server" />
        <br />
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

XSLT doc #2:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:asp="http://microsoft.com/2005/aspnet">
<xsl:output method="xml" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <asp:Calendar runat="server" />
        <br />
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

XSLT doc #3:

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" xmlns:asp="http://microsoft.com/2005/aspnet">
<xsl:output method="html" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>
    <xsl:template match="/">
        <asp:Calendar runat="server" />
        <br />
    </xsl:template>
</xsl:stylesheet>

All three had the same result, which is noted in my response to samjudson above. I haven't tried to pull in the data that I have in the XML doc, as I'm just trying to get the ASP.NET calendar to work in the first place.

***********************************

If anyone can let me know what I'm doing wrong, I'd very much appreciate it. Thanks.

KWilliams

Martin Honnen · May 5th, 2008, 09:53 AM

Your stylesheet can create the asp:Calendar markup but you need to parse that markup then to have an ASP.NET server-side control. Are you doing that?

Code:

Page.Controls.Add(Page.ParseControl(stringWithTransformationResult));

--
Martin Honnen
Microsoft MVP - XML

kwilliams · May 5th, 2008, 10:00 AM

Quote:

quote:Originally posted by Martin Honnen
Your stylesheet can create the asp:Calendar markup but you need to parse that markup then to have an ASP.NET server-side control. Are you doing that?

Code:

Page.Controls.Add(Page.ParseControl(stringWithTransformationResult));

--
Martin Honnen
Microsoft MVP - XML

No I did not. I know that this is probably a stupid question, but I am pretty much a newbie to all of this, so I'll ask it: What exactly do I place in the space that you have labeled "stringWithTransformationResult"?

Thanks for your help:)

KWilliams

Martin Honnen · May 5th, 2008, 10:17 AM

I assume you use ASP.NET and XslCompiledTransform to perform the XSLT transformation, you need to tranform to a string and parse that string result.
So assume your .aspx has a placeholder:

Code:

<asp:PlaceHolder ID="P1" runat="server"></asp:PlaceHolder>

and you want to place the Calendar in that placeholder then you can do that in the Page_Load method as follows:

Code:

        XslCompiledTransform proc = new XslCompiledTransform();
        proc.Load(Server.MapPath("XSLTFile1.xsl"));
        StringWriter writer = new StringWriter();
        proc.Transform(XmlReader.Create(Server.MapPath("XMLFile1.xml")), null, writer);
        P1.Controls.Add(Page.ParseControl(writer.ToString()));

--
Martin Honnen
Microsoft MVP - XML

kwilliams · May 5th, 2008, 02:30 PM

For the site itself, I'm actually using a central MasterPage setup to handle all of the XML and XSL transformations throughout the site. So I'm using the ASP.NET DocumentSource Property to transform the XML/XSL docs, like this:

Code-behind for Master Page (MasterPage.master.vb):

Code:

Partial Class MasterPage
    Inherits System.Web.UI.MasterPage

    Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, ByVal e As EventArgs)

        Dim strXMLPath_mc As String, strXSLPath_mc As String

        strXMLPath_mc = "docs/xml/events_calendar.xml"
            strXSLPath_mc = "docs/xslt/events_calendar.xsl"
            'Please Note: These 2 docs are actually dynamically produced using additional code, but I'm using the paths that are actually produced for this page for simplicity's sake.

        xslTransform_mc.DocumentSource = strXMLPath_mc
            xslTransform_mc.TransformSource = strXSLPath_mc
        End Sub
End Class

Master Page (MasterPage.master):

Code:

<%@ Master Language="VB" CodeFile="MasterPage.master.vb" Inherits="MasterPage" Explicit="True" Debug="True" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.IO" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Xml" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Xml.XPath" %>
<%@ Import Namespace="System.Xml.Xsl" %>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.1//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml11/DTD/xhtml11.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en">
<head id="Head1" runat="server">
</head>
<body>
    <div id="content">
        <asp:Xml id="xslTransform_mc" runat="server"></asp:Xml>
    </div>
</body>
</html>

ASP.NET doc (events_calendar.aspx):

Code:

<%@ Page Language="VB" MasterPageFile="~/MasterPage.master" AutoEventWireup="false" EnableSessionState="false" EnableViewState="false" title="Events Calendar" %>

So with this setup, how do you suggest using Page.Controls.Add(Page.ParseControl(stringWithTran sformationResult))?

KWilliams

Martin Honnen · May 6th, 2008, 05:44 AM

I don't think the ASP.NET Xml control helps if you want to use XSLT to create ASP.NET controls, it only allows you to generate HTML sent directly to the browser.

So you can't use the ASP.NET Xml control, instead you need to run the transformation as shown in my previous post. Put that code into your Page_Load handler and add the result to a control in your master page, for instance a place holder, as my example showed.

--
Martin Honnen
Microsoft MVP - XML

kwilliams · May 6th, 2008, 09:02 AM

I appreciate the suggestion, but doesn't that defeat the whole purpose of using a XML/XSLT transformed site? Wouldn't that be handling everything on the ASP.NET side of things? If so, that won't work with my setup, as the XML/XSLT docs only contain data for the body of the document. I don't want an events calendar on every page, which is what would happen if I put it into a placeholder on the Master Page...correct?

KWilliams