XML Demystified

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XML Demystifi ed
You really want this sorted in numerical order. You can fix this problem by using
the data-type attribute of the element. Set the data-type attribute to
number and XSLT places the numbers in numerical order, as we show here:
Writing an XSL can become time-consuming, especially if you have to define styles
for many elements in an XML source document. A common problem you might run
into is replicating lines of code when you want to repeat a style element in the XSL
stylesheet.
You can avoid replicating code by creating a template. A template associates a
block of code with a name. You use the name in your XSL stylesheet whenever you
want the block of code to appear in the XSL stylesheet.
You create the template using the element. Let’s suppose that an
XML source document describes a telephone number using the areacode element,
exchange element, and number element. You’ll need to reference each of these
every time you want to extract a telephone number.
Instead of repeating these, you can create a template and then call the template
whenever you want to extract elements of the phone number. Here’s how to create
a template. The value of the match attribute is the name of the template.
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You call the template by using the element in the XSL
stylesheet, as we show here. The value of the select attribute is the name of the
template that you want to use.
Looking Ahead
You use the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) to describe how an XML
document is to be transformed by the Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformation
(XSLT) processor into a result document. Transformation is the process of converting