Customer Reviews

XSLT: Mastering XML Transformations

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Although Tidwell emphasizes a real-world approach to tackling XSLT and includes plenty of practical examples in the book, he doesn't skimp when it comes to delivering the types of conceptual explanations (sections like "How a Stylesheet is processed" in Chpt 2 and "The XPath View of an XML Document" in Chpt. 3) that help readers understand what's going on "under the hood". Including a separate chapter covering the basics of XPath early in the book also makes for much easier reading, since we aren't left scrounging for scraps of information scattered throughout the text when XPath-related questions arise. If not for the fact that some authors have actually taken the opposite approach (introducing XPath concepts as they arise in the context of a discussion of XSLT), this would have
seemed like a no-brainer.

No review of this book would be complete without mentioning the value added by the appendices. Once you've digested all of the material in the body of the text, you'll likely continue to keep Tidwell's book close at hand because of Appendices A and C. Appendix A, the XSLT Reference, features a comprehensive dictionary-style reference for every element in XSLT 1.0 - including an XML source document, an example stylesheet that makes use of the element, and the result of the transformation for each. Appendix C, the XSLT and XPath Function Reference, follows a similar format.

This book is one of the most frustrating technical books I have ever read. The fact that it is from O'Reilly just makes it doubly insulting. The author doesn't bother to explain concepts. He just lists out the syntax for the various elements without bothering to explain how the instruction works. This book might be useful as an XSLT reference but it is useless as a learning tool. I totally agree with the other reviews of this book about the "huge honking examples" To give you an idea of how bad it is, the first XSLT example in this book is the obligatory "Hello World" example which is less than 20 lines. The second example is 3 pages long and uses concepts that have not been introduced at all!! The book also suffers from too many forward references. He keeps mentioning concepts that have no relation to the topic at hand. Sure, it might be great for completeness, but it just gets in the way when you're trying to learn a new concept and he keeps throwing additional, esoteric (by his own admission) stuff at you. In my opinion this is a very poorly written book.

I don't recommend this for a programmer. This book seemed to be a gloss over of XSLT and didn't probe too deeply into it. For that I recommend Michael Kay's excellent work XSLT.

Basically I zipped through this book and wanted more - I wanted to understand what was going on and not just be able to do it. Kay's book provides that and much, much more.

I approached this book expecting to be disappointed. After all there is no shortage of good introductions to XSLT on the web and in Micheal Kay's book we already have an authoritative reference. Actually this book is that rare breed - an advanced tutorial. The book begins with three chapters of introductory material. Wisely the author does not go into every feature. But the meat of the book is in chapters 5-8. It covers in detail keys() in chapter 6, sorting (chapter 7), document() ( chapter 8) and concludes with an excellent introduction to extension elements and functions. The writing is lucid and the author often evaluates alternative strategies. The appendix lists all the XSLT elements and functions with examples which alone is worth the admission. I have already read it twice and I recommend it strongly.

This is in my opinion is a good book on XSLT. It teaches the basics and then some advanced stuff as well. I especially liked the XSLT reference (the latter half of
the book) with examples of how to use the XSLT features, functions etc.

I picked it up because i'm preparing for the IBM xml exam and this is listed as a reference in the IBM web site.

The only complaint i have is that the book lists the entire code and they run for pages! :-(. I find it to be very distracting.

It was better to just show a few code snippets to highlight a partcular point and the reader c'd anyway use the code listing available in downloadable format in the oreilly web site.

Hope the author will cover more meaty stuff in the 2nd edition probably and avoid such big code listings.

I read the freely downloadable chapters of "XSLT quickly" by Bob Ducharme and found it to be excellent.
Unfortunately that book is'nt available here in India!

I would recommend that book over this one for people looking for a good introduction to XSLT. It's so crisp! and has been written for people who have been programming before.

Also check out XSLT and XPATh on edge..by Jeni tennison. wow i liked it. It assumes knowledge of XSLT though (ateast the basics) and deals with various practical usage of XSLT.

I have read 3 chapters as of now and found it to be very well written and useful.

If you are a java programmer looking to XSLT, i would recommend the following:

XSLT Quickly
XSLT and XPath on the edge
Java and XSLT

This book left me a little high and dry. While it explained basic stuff about XSLT, and indeed did get me from knowing little to knowing a lot more, this book fell short once you had the basics. I come away feeling like XSL is both obtuse and difficult to use (perhaps this is an accurate assesment :-), but I feel that the author failed to offer specific details that would be important to help understand, and also didn't provide guidance on how to diagnose and resolve problems.

Much of the book is a reference, and to be fair, each element has a pretty good example. But the organization of the reference is poor, making it difficult to find what you are looking for. For example, there are four separate appendices each alphabetically organized, but if you're not sure which one you need, that's frustrating. Worse, the index is simply terrible, not even having entries on essential elements!

I have bought and studied every book on XSLT that I can find. In my opinion, this is one of the best.

I delayed getting it originally because of some of the reviews, but after having read one of the author's articles in IBM developerWorks articles, I immediately rushed out ot get it. I'm kinda sorry now I waited.

The book treats the XSLT transformer Xalan as a command line utility to isolate and develop XSLT as a hands on approach.

There is no Java or other managing code to divert the directed discussion.

As such, it sets the stage for the next steps, in other books, adding Java and server functionality to the picture.

The authors tone is friendly, but not overly intrusive. It is a good read.

He anticipates questions and problems, and deals with some unique issues such as "emulating a for loop" that I haven't seen elsewhere.

His explanation of the case study - the tutorial builder from ibm developerworks - is a great example.

I enjoyed reading the book and I'd recommend it with 10 stars if they had it.

The negative reviews make sense only if they were really due to the difficulty of grokking XSLT. They are not really due to this book by any means I can see.

I'm sorry those readers didn't have a better time with the book. I don't think it would serve as an XSLT for beginners. It is for the next stage after that.

I intend to use it in every XML class I teach, after introducing the basics to cover the first stages of transformming with XSLT prior to intruducing Java.

Thanks to the author for writing it, and to O'Reilly for publishing it.

This book suffers from the big honking example problem. The authors clearly understand the subject but choose to not show each idea in a small code snippet (one that is usable) but wait until the end of the chapter (or book) and show everything. It would have been more useful to show each xml and xslt template snippet for each topic (such as how to use named templates with the call-template bit) or even how to do a for-each loop. In the end, searching for the language construct in the big honking example became to frustrating and complex, I have switched to a different book.

As a programmer who's been around the block more than once, I found this book made XSLT a lot more difficult than it needs to be. I had no previous experience with XSLT other than I knew what the acronym stood for. The examples get too difficult too quickly, and aren't very useful, in my opinion. The index is also pretty lousy, which makes learning a new technology difficult.

The chapter about Toot-o-Matic, however, was pretty interesting. It made me realize that XSLT can be used for some interesting and complicated problems.

I found "XSLT Quickly", published by Manning, to be a far better choice for someone with my level of XSLT experience. Perhaps I'll appreciate the O'Reilly title more when I have more experience.

Coding DTDs and XML documents is easy enough. But getting anything useful out of an XML document requires you to either write a program or to write an XSLT template. I'm not a hard-core programmer, so I'm pretty much limited to using XSLT. Doug takes you from the simplest of concepts to some pretty complex XSLT coding...all the while using tons of real-world examples and tips. The XPath chapter is especially helpful, taking all the mystery out of the strange syntax rules. The appendices provide loads of info on functions, too. If you've ever seen Doug on the conference circuit, you know that he's a really funny guy; his humor really comes through in the book, making it a joy to read. Summary: Finally a book by someone who knows his stuff AND knows how to get it across to the rest of us!