Jerry Stuckle <jstucklex@a...> wrote in
<gh9t0a$9lg$1@n...>:
> _Z_ wrote:
>> <?php
>> header() ;
>> $xsl = "MyForm.xsl" ;
>> $command = "xsltproc " . $xsl . " " . $_GET[XML_File] ;
>> $last_line = system( $command ) ;
>> ?>
>> 
>> Of course you have to have xsltproc installed, but I
>> assume you have it. This way enables you to test your XML
>> --> HTML transformation in testing environment. For
>> example: bash# xsltproc MyForm.xsl TestData.xml
> 
> Even more basic that that - you have to have permission to
> execute commands, which many shared hosts do not allow.

The XSL extension (using the very same libxslt that xsltproc
is a command-line front-end for) solves that problem
neatly, of course, but that leads us back to some people
being locked into the set of extensions their hosting
provider deemed 'appropriate' for their needs. My advice
would be changing the provider.

> And you must, of course, be running on a Linux system.

That's not true. At the very least, libxslt and xsltproc run
just fine under Windows using Cygwin, and, unless I'm much
mistaken, the open source *BSD family. I suspect there
wouldn't be any problems running it on any reasonably sane
proprietary UN*X as well. libxml2 and its evil twin libxslt
seem to be among the most widely spread libs in the world.

>> That is the end of the story if you want only to display
>> the data from XML file.
>> 
> 
> Only if you have those tools installed, and can stand the
> default format produced.

Sorry, either that doesn't make sense or I'm missing your
point completely. There's no 'default format' if we're
talking about XSLT. It's a programming language designed 
specifically for document transformation, so the 'default
format' is whatever you choose it to be.

> That often isn't true.  SimpleXML or the DOM 
> functions give you much more control.

True, SimpleXML and DOM give a lot of control and are often
the most reasonable choice for XML processing. But there's
absolutely no point in not having XSLT in your toolbox. If
you need transformations, it's often the most cheap,
efficient and maintainable approach.

-- 
If we want the average quality of computer programs to rise
by 1000%, all we have to do is carefully to select 90% of
the world's programmers, and shoot them. --Richard
Heathfield in <Sfedncgr46kOPmDanZ2dnUVZ8vCdnZ2d@b...>