Customer Reviews

XSLT and XPATH: A Guide to XML Transformations

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

 

 

A must read.

I HAVE read this book. In fact, I am still reading it. It is well written and well structured. The subject matter is clear and concise. It discusses the key subjects necessary to master XML transformations. The contributions from industry experts of several corporations and associations, such as the W3C, make it a well rounded syllabus.

The title is what initially drew me to this book. Why? I was thrown into the thick of things developing an XSLT based Web site templating engine. My first XSLT book was Wrox's XSLT Programmer's Reference. Although I found the syntactical information I needed to craft the templates of the XSLT stylesheet, I was missing the answers to some recurring questions: how do I effectively navigate the source XML
document? how do extract the desired node-set?

From my previous hands-on XSLT experience, it quickly became evident how important it was to master XPath. Learning how to effectively write a rule set and optimize a style sheet requires a good understanding of how to navigate an XML document.

This is a good book to introduce newcomers to the world of XSLT transformations as it is a good book for knowledgeable XSLT developers to further refine their template design and coding skills.

This book lays a solid foundation to begin coding XSLT style sheets. It builds upon this foundation by expanding on more complex subjects in subsequent chapters. I also find it to be a useful reference. I've typically found what I was looking for using the detailed index.

I was taken aback by one of the appendices, which reveals the true power of XSLT, solving the classic "N-Queens" AI problem via an XSLT stylesheet!

I'm quite happy to have purchased this title, and if I were to have the choice of only one book on XSLT this would be the book.

I suppose this book might be helpful as a reference, but to someone who is actually trying to figure out what to do with xslt and xpath, this book is a very poor primer. I found that, in addition to offering little explanation as to how xpath and xslt are needed in a larger context (is this supposed to supplant sql??, for example), the examples are so error-prone that I learned more by correcting the errors than I did reading the book. Here is a list of errors you will encounter (from the CD) for the first 3 chapters:

1.1 (string not quoted)
1.2 (only 1 top-level element allowed).
2.1 (invalid character)
2.4 (cannot locate resource)
2.5 (template.xml undeclared namespace)
2.7 (cannot locate resource)
3.2 (output.xml invalid at the top level)
3.3 ditto
3.4 worked -- hey, a working example!
3.5 (output.xml invalid at the top level)
3.6 misplaced period
3.7 invalid at top level
3.8 only 1 top level element allowed
3.9 invalid at the top level...

The rest of the chapter examples are similar to this one.
Without good examples, a programming book is almost worthless.

This feels like a book that had it's table of contents laid out, and then the content filled in as quickly as possible. Editing must have lasted about 3 days. With a more thorough editing process, and a bit more thought to the examples (the boulevard examples taumatized me so much, I nearly stopped driving), it may have been a very good book.

In some sections, the same paragraph is repeated verbatim 2 or even 3 times. Often in the chapter overview, and then on the next page in the first chapter section.

Possibly the book appeals to other learning styles better, but I've found it a tough slog. In fairness though, XSLT is a strange and difficult beast- I may be transferring some of my frustration on to the messenger!

However, in general, I find the examples are too repetive, causing them to blur together. And you find myself flipping back as many as 6 pages at times to find the xml code the description is talking about.

And there is a lack of technical illustrations to help with more difficult topics.

I would have appreciate larger examples from different domains to specific goals. The problem with a lot of the examples is the purposelessness of the examples.

XML in a Nutshell, and Michael Kay's XLST reference have provided me much more joy.

My last word of advice- follow the examples live. XSLT and XPath need practice, and lots of it.

In my XSLT work, I feel I refer to this book more often than the other book on my desk (Michael Kay's XSLT Programmers reference). This book exudes a much greater level of technical detail, especially when relating to XPath (a thorough understanding of which is incredibly important to any XSLT developer). The explanation of XPath Axes and Nodetests was extraordinarily helpful (it is a better reference than the standard itself).

The information provided for each XSLT element is quite detailed, and explains in great detail how those elements are used in actual stylesheets.

I suggest anyone interested in doing hardcore XSLT development have this book on your desk. While this is definately not in the league of "XSLT for Dummies", it certianly is an perfect reference for the seasoned developer trying to push XSLT to its limits.

I've had this book on my shelf since publication. I had to dig it out last week to do some fairly complex XSLT programming. The book was a huge help and helped me get everything done quite quickly.

I use this book as a reference book, not a how-to. This book is great for things like "what is the function that does 'x' and what are its arguments?" It probably helps that I know XML pretty deeply, so I don't typically look at the examples. Of course, that might be because the docs on the functions in the book are so good that I find I don't need to look at the examples.

XSLT hasn't changed much since this book was published. If you deal with XSLT, and, by extension, XPATH, get this book for reference.

I would agree this is more of a reference for the seasoned XPath/XSLT programmer. I'm a intermediate java programmer with some decent background in xml. I haven't really been able to get that much from this book in the way of examples. It's very light on examples.

Any book that takes the dense, tedious specs and translates them into layman's English is always worth it and very welcomed. The form of the translation in this case are a number of very clear and focused examples. Sure, one could trail and error and deduce the behavior of the stylesheet, but who has that kind of time? This book will serve you very well if you need a quick jumpstart into XSLT and XPATH. I await a similar volume on XSL:FO.

This book is an excellent reference for those wanting to learn XSLT and XPath. The authors provide concrete examples and easy to follow descriptions of the functions and processes under discussion. XSLT and XPath: A Guide to XML Transformations should be a part of any well-rounded XML library.

This is a good reference book, but is not a good start for developers who want to get familiarized with XSLT and XPATH. this book helped me to find what I was looking for and was unable to find in other resources including MSDN which has the worst documentation when it comes to XSL in general and XSLT and XPATH syntax in particular.

On major drawback is that this book doesn't provide the user with complicated examples that utilizes different XPath functions.

If you want a single reference book this is your book.

I love this book, they are no longer printing this book, but if you can grab it, grab it! It's truly amazing. Love this book and it comes with a CD.