How Do I?

The following tutorials demonstrate some common XSLT tasks.

• Represent Data in XML
• Reference Data Values
• Use CSS in XSLT
• Perform Iterations
• Operate on Data Values
• Control the Flow of Transformation
• Process Multiple XML Documents

This set of task-based, hands-on exercises shows you how to create an XSLT solution. The scenario is to design a simple regional sales reporting system for a fictitious book publishing enterprise, Scootney Publishing. This involves creating an XML document to represent the quarterly sales data, specifying template rules in an XSLT style sheet to handle business logic, and presenting the sales results in a format that can be viewed from the Web.

You will work with the following three files throughout the exercises.

Bold text will be used to highlight parts of the code that are relevant and important in each step. Files created at the end of each step might represent only a part of the final solution. As a reference, the complete listings of these three files, plus the output in HTML, are shown in Final Results of the XSLT How Do I? Examples, at the end of this section.

Before you start

To complete the exercises, you need the following:

• Microsoft® XML Core Services (MSXML) 4.0, available from the MSDN® Online Downloads.
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.
• An HTML or text editor, such as Notepad.
• Optionally, Internet Explorer Tools for Validating XML and Viewing XSLT Output. This utility allows you to access the View XSL Output and Validate XML commands by right-clicking on Internet Explorer.