Displaying XML with XSLT

With XSLT you can transform an XML document into HTML.

Displaying XML with XSLT

XSLT is the recommended style sheet language of XML.

XSLT (eXtensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is far more sophisticated than CSS.

One way to use XSLT is to transform XML into HTML before it is displayed by the browser as demonstrated in these examples:

View the XML file, the XSLT style sheet, and View the result.

Below is a fraction of the XML file. The second line links the XML file to the XSLT file:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="simple.xsl"?>
<breakfast_menu>
  <food>
    <name>Belgian Waffles</name>
    <price>$5.95</price>
    <description>
       two of our famous Belgian Waffles
    </description>
    <calories>650</calories>
  </food>
</breakfast_menu>

If you want to learn more about XSLT, find our XSLT tutorial on our homepage.

Transforming XML with XSLT on the Server

In the example above, the XSLT transformation is done by the browser, when the browser reads the XML file.

Different browsers may produce different result when transforming XML with XSLT. To reduce this problem the XSLT transformation can be done on the server.

View the result.

Note that the result of the output is exactly the same, either the transformation is done by the web server or by the web browser.