XSLT 2.0 Programmer's Reference (Programmer to Programmer) (Paperback)

by Michael Kay (Author) "XSLT (which stands for eXtensible Stylesheet Language: Transformations) is a language that, according to the very first sentence in the specification (found at http: /..." (more)
Key Phrases: literal result element, stylesheet module, import precedence, Programmer's Reference, Attributes Name Value Meaning, File Folder (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
What is this book about?

XSLT 2.0 Programmer's Reference, 3rd Edition, is the authoritative reference guide to the language. Without using the formal and inaccessible language of the W3C specifications, it tells you exactly what every construct in the language does, and how it is intended to be used. This book is a reference rather than a tutorial; it is designed for the professional programmer who is using the language every day. It is the book that people quote when they claim that a particular product is giving the wrong answer, and the book that implementers of the language turn to when they want clarification of the specifications.

At the same time, the book is readable. Reviews of the previous editions of the XSLT Programmer’s Reference, which this book grew from, show that readers appreciate the background material on the design thinking behind the language, the essay on functional programming, the occasional dry wit, the gentle criticism of the language specification when appropriate, and the fact that the examples stray into a diverse range of interesting application areas.

From the Back Cover
When XML debuted in 1998, it was quickly embraced as both a practical tool and a strategic technology. XSLT and XPath soon became the preferred high-level languages for manipulating XML content. Now the editor of the XSLT 2.0 specification has written the ultimate reference manual for XSLT 2.0.

You’ll gain a complete understanding of the concepts underlying XSLT, what’s new in version 2.0, the structure of XSLT stylesheets, their relationship to XML schemas, and more. You will see how the language provides extensibility, and how to use it to create real XSLT applications. Finally, you will learn to use XSLT as a functional programming language to tackle complex computational problems.

What you will learn from this book

• What’s new in XSLT since the previous edition of this bestselling book
• Where XSLT fits into the XML family
• What every construct in the language does, and how to use each one
• How XSLT transforms XML to handle data conversions and data publishing
• How to use XSLT elements, patterns, and functions
• Development methods for specific stylesheets
• How to apply XSLT design patterns to produce selected results

Who this book is for

This book is for professional XML and XSLT programmers and programmers experienced in XML, HTML, and Web architecture who want to learn XSLT.

Wrox Programmer’s References are designed to give the experienced developer straight facts on a new technology, without hype or unnecessary explanations. They deliver hard information with plenty of practical examples to help you apply new tools to your development projects today.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 960 pages
• Publisher: Wrox; 3 edition (August 20, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764569090
• ISBN-13: 978-0764569098
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.3 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (25 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #422,244 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars GREAT For Experienced Readers, TERRIBLE For Beginners, November 21, 2004

By	Victor L. Peters (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

It is difficult to give a numeric rating to this book because it depends on what kind of reader you are:
- If you have done little or no XSLT, and you want a book to efficiently explain how to start doing XSLT this is a TERRIBLE choice.
- If you are a beginner who wants to know every tiny detail of XSLT and has plenty of time to learn it, then this is a good choice.
- If you've already read an XSLT book, you are already comfortable with XSLT, and now you want to learn all the extra details the other authors thought wasn't important enough to include, then this is a GREAT choice.

This book almost reads like a specifiation. Although to be fair, I've read some specifications, like the EJB specification, that are more focused than this book. Any good trainer or training author knows that you have to organize your material to first put the emphasis on the central introductory concepts. Once your audience understands the basics, then you can build upon that foundation to explain the advanced topics. Along the way, you should always put the main focus on the most important topics, and just briefly mention extraneous details. Unfortunatley, this book does not organize the material for learning and covers everything with approximately the same emphasis. As just one example of this, Chapter 1 spends eight LONG pages on the history of XSLT including details like when so-and-so joined the specification team or presented a paper at a conference. What Chapter 1 does not do is give you any idea of how to write an XSLT sheet. I plodded my way through the first two chapters wondering when we'd get past all the gory details to a description of how to write an introductory XSLT sheet. Finally, I had enough and looked through the book trying to find how far I should jump ahead to find the introductory section, and realized it didn't exist. All the basics are interspersed with endless details throughout the book.
To be fair, the book calls itself a "programmer's reference." So one could argue that it shouldn't be designed to learn XSLT. However, trying to use this book as a reference would be equally probelmatic because its too hard to find the important information among all the extraneous details.
So if you already know XSLT well and want to know all the extra details, I truly do highly recommend this book. But if you want to learn XSLT in a resonable amount of time, I strongly recommend against this book.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Great material, awful presentation, October 3, 2005

By	peraldus (Bern Switzerland) - See all my reviews

The author is one of the great xslt scholars, and this book is a brillant testimony to the breadth of his knowledge.

The author is a professional, Wrox is a professional publisher. Then how come the book is so utterly poorly organized? Any book bearing the subtitle "Programmer's Reference" should be organized in such a way that the programmer will rapidly find what she's looking for. Thats is certainly not the case here. An intelligent use of page headers and footers is the first thing a reference book should try to achieve. No such attempt here (try to imagine a dictionnary with no page headers...).

The same goes for the use of titles and subtitles, general chapter and page organisation, font choices etc. The whole thing is a typesetter's nightmare. I might be wrong, but one suspects the author was allowed to typeset the book himself...

Bottom line: it takes way too long to find what one's looking for. In a reference work such flaws are unacceptable.

I still enjoy the book's excellent coverage of the subject matter, but its use is bound with much bickering and swearing out lound.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, Comprehenive and Praxis Oriented, September 30, 2006

By	Carsten Cumbrowski "Carsten aka Roy/SAC & Cir... (Fresno, CA USA) - See all my reviews

I had to do something with XSLT. I never did really anything with XSLT before, but are very familiar with XML and programming in general.

I got from a friend the prior edition (XSLT 2nd Ed.) to this one (XSLT 2.0) and was impressed about the deep knowledge, especially the practical one and loved the comparison to actual source code in other programming languages in cases where XSLT and its philosophy differs dramatically from classic programming languages.

I found the answers to all my (tricky) issues, except to one where I got enough information to figure it out myself though. I struggled and still do when it comes to html tags usage as value in XSLT Functions. Be it "translate" , "regex" or "substring-after" etc. I still did not get my translate of white spaces (line break) to html line-breaks ( br - tag ) working 100%. May be the updated Edition answers this only thing that was not 100% perfect covered (for me) in the previous edition.

The book "stole" an hour from me to read the interesting chapters about the programming language philosophy behind XSLT, the "functional programming" rather than "structured programming". I saw a lot of other chapters providing a well researched history of computer programming before the Internet until now.

The Book is big and it is not one of those big books that are artificially inflated by adding screen shots of intuitive and straight forward pages that do not require any explanation. No, not in this case. You get over 700 pages (2nd Ed) and over 900 pages (this edition) full of great stuff that would still make a good book, even if you remove every part about XSLT from it.

I came to buy the 2nd Edition today and saw the XSLT 2.0 (3rd Edition) which I obviously bought instead. I am looking forward to get the updated and obviously greatly extended version within the next few days. You get a lot of knowledge and experience for what the books price is (I am amazed how cheap it, Wrox, I think I got the better end of the bargain in case of this book ;) )

The mentioned resources in the book are also great. I added several of them next to Michael Kay's books to the Web Development Resources Section of my personal (but public) Internet Marketing and Web Development portal at [...].