Performing Client-Side XSL Transformations
By Tony Marston2005-12-12
Introduction
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It is a feature of my software that I produce HTML output from XML documents with server-side XSL transformations. This means that as well as producing the XML document I transform it into HTML on the server before I send the result to the client.
- The disadvantage to this method is that it requires extra processing on the server.
- The advantage is that the client browser receives an HTML file and does not require any knowledge of XSLT. This is important when you consider the fact that browser support for XSLT has been slow and patchy.
However, performing XSL transformations on the server does increase the load on the server. Although the speed of XSL transformations has increased significantly with PHP 5 there are still a large number of web hosts running PHP 4. There are even a number of web hosts which do not have the XSLT extension enabled.
Browser support for XSLT is increasing, with both Internet Explorer 6 and Firefox leading the way, so if you are using one of these browsers then it is worth considering as an option.
This article will show the changes I have made to my software to support client-side XSL transformations, so if you have a suitable browser you can try it out for yourself.
Tutorial Pages:
» Introduction
» Software changes
» Try it out
