Tip: Batch Processing XML with XSLT 2.0

By Jack Herrington
2005-05-04

HXDLG to the Rescue!

While surfing the Web, I found an obscure little Java program called the HTML/XML Directory List Generator (HXDLG) on SourceForge (see Resources). One of the functions of HXDLG is to create either HTML or XML representations of directory listings. I downloaded the tool and ran the statement in Listing 1 from the command line.

Listing 1. Code to create an XML directory using HXDLG

java -jar hdlg.jar XML

   /Users/jherr/Projects/ibm_xml_tips/filelist/testfiles/

   /Users/jherr/Projects/ibm_xml_tips/filelist/files.xml

The program takes three arguments. The first argument is the output type -- either XML or HTML. The second argument is the directory path. The third argument is the path of the output XML file. The result looks something like the code in Listing 2.

Listing 2. The directory in XML

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<!DOCTYPE hdlg:filesystem SYSTEM

  "http://www.hdlg.info/XML/filesystem.dtd">

<hdlg:filesystem

 xmlns:hdlg="http://www.hdlg.info/XML/filesystem">

   <hdlg:folder name="testfiles"

     url="file:/Users/jherr/Projects/ibm_xml_tips/filelist/testfiles/">

      <hdlg:file name="test1.xml" size="179"

         type="unknown"

  url="file:/ibm_xml_tips/filelist/testfiles/test1.xml">

      </hdlg:file>

      <hdlg:file name="test2.xml" size="181"

         type="unknown"

  url="file:/ibm_xml_tips/filelist/testfiles/test2.xml">

      </hdlg:file>

      <hdlg:file name="test3.xml" size="181"

         type="unknown"

  url="file:/ibm_xml_tips/filelist/testfiles/test3.xml">

      </hdlg:file>

   </hdlg:folder>

</hdlg:filesystem>

That's some high-end stuff. It has a Document Type Definition (DTD) and uses namespaces, and also has the file names and URLs that you're looking for. With absolute paths, to boot!

Tutorial Pages:
» Use Directory Listings in XML to Drive XSLT 2.0 Processing
» HXDLG to the Rescue!
» Test It Out
» Summary
» Resources

First published by IBM DeveloperWorks

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