Customer Reviews

Beginning XSLT

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was extremely impressed with the quality of this book. The material was presented progressively, each chapter building on the last. The material was very well organized. I was using XSLT in my job for the first time, and I immediately began to feel comfortable with it based on the examples in this book. I read another XSLT book about six months ago and came away from it still confused (maybe because I am used to procedural languages, and XSLT is a functional language). This is a very smart woman who can explain complex material clearly. I'll buy anything else she writes!

I've found "Beginning XSLT" by Jeni Tennison ...to be one of the best overall books on Web development to come out in recent times. I've always wanted a book covering in-depth examples of XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations), as I've so often grown sick and tired of the mere 30 or less pages my XML books dedicate to the subject. XSLT is quite easy to learn, it's just traditionally been hard to find enough information on the subject all in the same place.

Published in May 2002, the examples use the latest XSLT W3C recommendation, so it's current and set to go... Much thanks to the folks at Wrox for putting this one together.

Written in a manner that is both educational and entertaining, Jeni presents the reader with a simple theme everyone's familiar with - a television schedule listing consisting of XML-based data. She proceeds to describe how XSLT can be used to quickly render XML into effective hypertext documents for dynamic presentation.

While the Web development community is normally torn on this approach, with some devs preferring a more wider range of examples, with others favoring the application of a specific technology towards a single concept, (I'll admit that I'm normally one of the former), Tennison's use of the example is easy to grasp and far-reaching. She lays out the example and then proceeds to construct it. And doing so along with her is quite cool.

The book features excellent descriptions of how a developer can work with result sets, use XSLT functions, keys/grouping, escaping and working with CDATA, using variables and parameters, recursion, and one of the best introductory discussions of XPath in print. The book is also completed by two very healthy appendices that serve as quick references guides on XSLT and XPath. The major platforms supporting XSLT and their parsers are described and contrasted in-depth, including MSXML3, Saxon, Xalan, SAX, etc.

Tennison takes the point-of-view of a best-practices approach, preaching performance and thoughtful, intuitive design over mere pushing of data to be spit out. She structures her discussion in such a way that makes it easy for the experienced programmer to quickly pickup XSLT for their projects, but in doing so remaining within the grasp of the novice to learn a powerful new tool.

The only criticism I have about the book is that due to the ongoing example of the TV guide, it makes the book somewhat difficult to pickup in mid-project, as frequent reference is made to examples laid out in earlier chapters. One must usually go through the examples from the beginning to really get it.

But this book's positive aspects far outweigh the negative, and the latter is only a personal situation I ran into... the book is a steal considering everything you and your development team will get out of it.

This book really helped me get going with XSLT.
The author explains things at an appropriate level for a knowledgable programmer who is not familiar with XSLT/XPath. Chapters end with a Summary section and Review questions/exercises that help solidify learning.
Minor complaint: there are some "oversimplifications" in this beginners' book, which are misleading if you take them as literal truth. All in all though, very helpful. The author's broad and deep expertise shows, as do her pedagogical skills.

The author is active on the XSL mailing list and personally answers XSLT questions from several people daily, which adds value to the book.

Now that Wrox has been liquidated, order this book while you can!

Forget that Michael Kay book! This is the one you need. Although it is called "Beginning XSLT", the author moves very quickly along and really covers everything you need to know. So even if you are looking for something more than a beginner book then give this one a try, you'll be glad you did. I am really impressed with it.

I found this to be an excellent book for XSLT beginners. I've been a web developer for about 6 years now (HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc) but was totally new to XSLT. I was able to follow the examples in the book quite easily, and found the explanations to be clear and comprehensive. I was able to incorporate some of the examples into my own work right away, in particular the section on recursive templates.

Absolutely the best instructional text for anyone beginning XSLT, step bt step approach with alternative approaches, very little re-reading of text required, she gets her points across very very well - highly recommended

Title says it all. Jeni Tenison is an outstanding XSLT developer, her book are top notch. If you develop XSLT pages consider the book...

This is an exact copy of the book published by Wrox in 2002. I found a used copy of the Wrox edition for three bucks in a bin of a technical store. Looks like the folks at APress took the rights and re-published it. And I am noticing here now that the 2.0 version is scheduled for pubblication in a couple of months.

So far I think it is the best book for a beginner to learn XSLT. What I like is that Jeni explains the concept with a lot of examples in one project "TV Guide Site". Just following her examples you can learn XSLT step by step. The reason that I don't give 5 stars is that I don't think it is good way she always keep using CSS in her example when she talks about XSLT stylesheet. It really makes me confused. Why don't we just use one style rather than two stlye at the same time? For me a beginner having not a lot CSS background I like more pure XSLT examples.

In one word, this is the best book about XSLT for a beginner.

Jeni calls it "Beginning" XSLT since she probably wanted to attract new-comers, but this book goes well beyond the intro stuff. I have 3 books on XLST, the others being good books, but this is by far the best. Real world examples, plenty of explanation for each. What else can I say. Buy this if you need to work with XML/XSLT.