XSLT for Dummies

XSLT transforms XML documents into something new. But before you can write an XSLT stylesheet, you need to have a pretty good idea about what you want that something to look like. So, for this first example, suppose you need to create a new version of the scores.xml document that has three changes from the original:

• The children of each score element are turned into attributes.

• The grade element is removed.

• The year element is renamed releasedate .

Take the first element as an example:

<score id="1"> <film>A Little Princess</film> <composer>Patrick Doyle</composer> <year>1995</year> <grade>100</grade> </score>

With these changes applied, the new element looks like this:

<score id="1" film="A Little Princess" composer="Patrick Doyle" releasedate="1995"/>

All the preliminaries are now set. You created your source XML file. You know what the target document needs to look like. You are now ready to become a XSL transformer. Yippee!