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Summary: Step-by-step instructions, sample code & numerous examples
Review: Now in an updated and expanded second edition, The XSL Companion by ISL expert Neil Bradley covers all the features of the new XSLT language standard, which has been established as an addendum to the XML language expressly for transformation needs. Sections cover transformations using XSLT, XPath expressions, formatting with XSL, and a host of useful references. Written especially for the experienced XSL programmer looking to catch up with the latest evolution of this versatile and useful language, The XSL Companion offers step-by-step instructions, sample code, numerous examples and more to help the reader quickly and easily integrate new concepts into a fluid and dynamic program creation medium. ...
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Summary: Not a good book!
Review: The code examples in this book is not helpful at all.
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Summary: Cutting edge book for a cutting edge technology
Review: The need for the separation of content from format in web design has been apparent for some time now. XSL is just the newest piece to be adopted. Combined with XML a designer is given great control over data flow and format within their web site."The XSL Companion" teaches the webmaster how to implement this language. I found the book to be clear and easy to understand. The code example were helpful. While I still consider myself an XML newbie, I think this book will remain "close at hand" for all my future projects.
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Summary: Best XSLT Reference Available
Review: This is an excellent way to learn XSLT. The progression of chapters makes it both easy and exciting to read, in anticipation of learning about even more of XSLT's features. The book is well written, but there are at least a couple of typos in the examples. The description is generally clear enough that there will generally be no confusion (such as the ending " tag on page 132, instead of "" -- although the tag typo on page 127 causes more confusion).Filters, XPath expressions, and using named templates as subroutines are covered well, and many other useful tidbits are given, such as how to output in HTML format (no closing tags), passing comments through to the output file, and suppressing the output of unnecessary namespace declarations. Calling Java methods from XSLT is also covered. I especially liked the explanation of how to reorganize input into a completely different order in the output, as well as how to insert content from other XML files. The formatting language called "XSL" is also covered in detail in the last half of the book, if you have a need to learn it. Hopefully, browsers begin to support it soon. The only material that I wanted to see covered that wasn't is how to perform arithmetic expressions (multiplication, division, and modulus, for example, although addition and subtraction are supported and examples are given). This is the best XSLT reference that I've found, but beware that much of the examples do not work in Microsoft IE 5.0 (or even 5.5 -- even with the latest 3.0 msxml parser). There are several issues, one of which is that the "http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" XSL namespace is not recognized and an older one must be used, instead). But the book references several parsers that *do* work with the latest XSLT spec, including XP and XT. This is really a great book on XSLT, XPath, and XSL!
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Summary: Excellent book; short, to the point and well written
Review: With index and all this book is just a tad over 300 pages. For the price you may be tempted to look to other books; I would urge you not to. After a in depth read of the first three chapters and a quick scan of the remaining chapters I feel this author is very capable of providing condensed information for the intermediate-advanced level developer. Any more than 300 pages would require unneeded "fluff" thrown in to attempt to make the book more useful to everyone, and would only frustrate the intermediate-advanced developer who's time is valuable. For my needs this book was perfect. It povided very detailed information on XSL and explained how XSL relates to XSLT and XPath, it also explained XQL. If you pick up a general XML book you usually will only find one or two chapters (two at best) discussing XSL. This book is intended as a companion to a general XML book (XML For Dummies, or this authors own XML Companion come to mind) this book assumes you know what XML is, what a DTD is, etc... I have searched for a book to teach XSL to perform complex filtering and grouping in the output, prior to reading this book I had read: XML for dummies (IDG Press) and Professional ASP XML (Wrox Press), this book goes into much better detail and is a pefect companion to both of the books listed above. The authors writting style is excellent, he provides many short examples of input/processing and output code in each chapter. He does not hold your hand and many of his descriptions have to be read a few times to fully grasp (XSL isn't as simple as you may think). Overall I feel very comfortable in saying this is the best book (and one of the only books) on the market to fully explain current XSL standards.
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Summary: Largely over-rated.
Review: With so many excellent books on this topic, I am surprised at the positive score. This is a very poor book, both in terms of the lack of clarity of the examples - and the inadequate explanatory text. I would recommend potential buyers to think twice about wasting money on this tome; much of the content can be gleaned from the net for free anyway. Avoid.
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Summary: A thorough explanation of an important and emerging skill
Review: XSL, an acronym for eXtensible Stylesheet Language, is a way to perform transformations on code. It can be used to create HTML code for display and to convert XML code from one form to another. More precisely, an XSLT (XSL Transformations) processor will accept code in XSLT and data in XML and will convert the combination into an XSL document. Once this is done, an XSL processor will interpret the XSL instructions and render it into a document that is presented on paper or screen via a browser. The end result will be that XML data is converted into other formats. While not quite precise, the general practice has been to refer to all these operations as being under the XSL naming umbrella.
This complete process is done by writing a set of rules that the processors must follow. In this book, the significant rules in the XSL language are demonstrated. XSL is a very rich language, containing constructs that all programmers will recognize, albeit in most cases in an altered form. The rules follow the general tag syntax of HTML, so the only background needed to understand them is a solid grounding in the structure and purpose of standard HTML tags.
The goal of the author is to present the organizational structure and specific tags that are used to perform the operations that can be done with XSL code. Therefore, no time is spent in demonstrating how rules will be rendered in a specific XSLT or XSL processor. This was a very wise decision, in that it takes enough effort to simply describe the purpose of the tags and how they relate to each other. An attempt to demonstrate how the result appears in any specific package would not have appreciably added to the effectiveness of the presentation and would no doubt have left some group unhappy.
The rules are thoroughly explained with code examples for almost every topic covered. They are short, showing the purpose of the structure, but sometimes they lack a bit in showing the complete context of use. Of course the rules are local, but like many programming commands, when implemented they can only be completely understood in a broader context.
With the large number of major players now backing and implementing solutions using XML, knowledge of XSL and XSLT is a skill worth having. This book will help you learn them, however it does not have coded examples to run, which will make it more difficult to learn from than some other, do it yourself books. That aside, it is still worth reading and I strongly recommend it.
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