XSLT Support in the .NET Framework

Overview

XSLT is an excellent technology that adds more power to XML. XSLT is a language by itself like most other programming languages. It is the language to transform source data structure to destination data structure and may not be suitable to implement business logic. This means that existing programming languages go hand in hand with XSLT and XSLT adds more power to them. It is possible to get away from XSLT using XML DOM to some extent, but this solution is usually not as elegant in most data/document conversions when compared to using XSLT.

This article only focuses on .net support for XSLT and using XSLT features from .net Framework. I would like to encourage everyone to consider XSLT as an option when it comes to data conversion/transformation. If any application uses XML heavily, there is high possibility that XSLT might solve few key issues in more elegant/efficient way.

This article does not cover complete details of XSLT and there is enough material available on the Internet for this purpose. Please see the reference section for details of books and useful URLs.

XSLT support in .net:

System.Xml.Xsl is the namespace for XSLT supported classes in .net Framework. XslTranform class is .net implementation of XSLT version 1.0 recommendation. XslTransform is the XSLT processor/engine in .net. I believe XslTransform is complete .net framework implementation and does not use MSXML. At least I did not see any reference of MSXML, in XslTransform or .net framework documentation.

XSLT and XSL

XSL started with a goal of providing presentation and formatting support to XML. It has evolved into transformation and formatting objects. They are grouped under XSLT (XSL Transformations) and XSL-FO (XSL Formatting objects). Majority of applications that use web pages for presentation can get away with XSLT alone. There so much that can be done just with XSLT. This article does not cover XSL-FO.

XSLT is not just for presentation:

XSLT is not just another style sheet language (like CSS) and used for presentation of XML over web only. There are many uses of XSLT in real world. Obviously showing XML document as HTML pages on web is one of the uses of XSLT. Most content management applications use this approach, to separate presentation and data.

There are numerous occasions where XSLT can come to help. Mainly applications that merge multiple XML documents to single document (OR) convert different input data formats to a uniform data format that a specific application can process.

In today's world where XML is the data standard and with many applications producing XML data in different format, there is always a requirement to transform these different formats. This is where XSLT is handy.

Samples of XSLT in .net:

Following are 3 simple examples show using XSLT in .net and ASP.NET. You can look into the reference section for more details. There is no sample code provided separately for download, as the samples are too small and code is already presented with in each sample.

1. Simple XSLT:

1.a. Sample XML file: Let us consider a simple XML file with employee names. We would like to list all employee names from this XML file on the web and would like to do this using XSLT.

Following is sample XML file:

<PrakashFinancial>
     <Employee ID="1" Name="Sid" />
     <Employee ID="2" Name="Bob" />
     <Employee ID="3" Name="Rao" />
     <Employee ID="4" Name="Jack" />
     <Employee ID="5" Name="David" />
</PrakashFinancial>

1.b. Sample XSLT file: Following sample XSL file will list all employee names from above XML file and put a title "List of employees"

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0">
<xsl:output method="html" encoding="utf-8" />

<xsl:template match="/PrakashFinancial">
     <xsl:text>
          List of Employees :
     </xsl:text>

     <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="/PrakashFinancial/Employee">
     <xsl:value-of select="@Name"/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

1.c. Apply transformation:

// Simplified C# code - Showing only code that is important
using System.Xml.Xsl;

XslTransform oTf = new XslTransform();

oTf.Load("specify XSL file");

oTf.Transform("Input XML file","Output File");

1.d. Output file generated:

Following HTML output will be generated in this case:

List of Employees : Sid Bob Rao Jack David

NOTE: Obviously above sample is similar to "Hello world" sample. It only gives quick view of what is involved using XSLT in .net.

2. Calling .net Code from XSL documents:

Using <msxsl:script> tag in XSLT, it is possible to write code using C#, VB.NET or any other .net Framework languages. XslTransform class will convert this scripting language to intermediate language. Alternately it is possible to simply call existing business components from the script block instead of keeping business logic in side XSL document.

For example, if we want to display today's date in above output of Sample 1. Following XSL file shows what changes we need to call script functions defined in XSL. Changes are in bold for readability.

At high-level, we need to use "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt" namespace where "msxsl:script" is defined. All user defined scripts are under name "Testing" prefix. Please see reference section for more details on using <msxsl:script>.

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0"
     xmlns:msxsl="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:xslt"
     xmlns:Testing="urn:my-scripts">

<msxsl:script language="C#" implements-prefix="Testing">
     <![CDATA[
     public string getDate(){
          return (DateTime.Today.ToShortDateString());
     }
     ]]>
</msxsl:script>

<xsl:output method="html" encoding="utf-8" />

<xsl:template match="/PrakashFinancial">
     <xsl:text>
          List of Employees :
     </xsl:text>

     <xsl:value-of select="user:getDate()"/>

     <xsl:apply-templates/>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="/PrakashFinancial/Employee">
     <xsl:value-of select="@Name"/>
</xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Note: XSLT supports many built-in functions and first step is to see if any task can be handled through existing functions in XSLT. Writing script is recommended to do more complex things with XSLT to extend functionality or to re-use some business logic in existing components.

3. ASP.NET support for XSLT

If you have XML document and XSL document and would like to process XSLT on server-side and return final result, ASP.NET has a web server control for you. <asp:xml> does exactly this. <asp:xml> web server control can take XML document and XSL document, apply transformations and show the result on the browser.

It is very easy to use XML control in ASP.NET. Try the following:

3.a: Create sample ASP.NET web application

3.b: Copy above XML and XSL file to "SampleData.XML" and "SampleTransform.XSL" and copy them to above web application root directory.

3.c: On WebForm1.aspx drag and drop "Xml" control you see in "WebForm controls" of your toolbox.

3.d: On Page load add the following code: (Webform1.aspx.cs file)

Xml1.DocumentSource  = "SampleData.XML";
Xml1.TransformSource = "SampleTransform.XSL";

3.e: Run the sample web page and you will see that transformation is performed on server-side by ASP.NET control and output is rendered on web page.

Testing and timing XSLT:

1. MSXSL.EXE: Microsoft provides free download of simple XSLT tool (MSXSL.exe). You can get this for free from Microsoft's website. This tool also provides time to do the transformation with -t option.

Example: msxsl.exe SampleXML.xml SampleXSL.xsl -o Output1.html -t

The above command transforms SampleXML.xml (by applying XSL from SampleXSL.xsl) and sends the output Output1.html. The above command also gives the timings (-t option).

Note: MSXSL.EXE is only light wrapper using MSXML components. So you have to install latest MSXML from Microsoft site before using this tool.

2. Internet Explorer (>= 5.x): You can use IE (Version > 5.x) to reference XSLT inside any XML document and let IE do the transformation. This is good for testing your XSL files.

Using XSLT without .net?

It is not the intention to address non-.net related XSLT details in this article. But for the sake of completion I will cover few options.

If all the users are using IE (version >= 5.x), then IE has built in support to apply XSL on XML and show the result. Instead of server-side transformation you could use this, but it may force all users to use correct IE version. There are some ISAPI filters available on IIS that can do server-side transformation if browser does not support it etc.

References:

1. Books on XSLT: I liked Wrox Book "XSLT Programmer's Reference". I think it is a good book on XSLT. Here's a link to more information about the book: XSLT : Programmer's Reference.

2. W3C XSLT 1.0 recommendation: http://www.w3.org/TR/xslt

3. Good article on using XSLT for merging documents: http://www.fawcette.com/archives/premier/mgznarch/xml/2001/06jun01/rj0103/rj0103.asp

   (Samples in this article use few ideas from above article)

4. MSXML 4.0: Microsoft MSXML (Implementation of W3C XSLT 1.0 recommendation)

5. MSXSL.exe: Command Line Transformation Utility (msxsl.exe) - Command line tool to test XSLT

6. .net Framework example using XSLT (for both VB.net/C#)

   You can find many useful samples on Microsoft website using XslTransformation or scripting etc. The following is the link that uses <msxsl:script> example: XSLT Stylesheet Scripting using <msxsl:script>