XSL Transformation With PHP And Sablotron - Handling Things Better (
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Now, though the script you just saw
is pretty primitive, it gets the job done. However, when you're working on a real
project, you need to be more professional in your approach. So let's take this
to the next level, with a slightly different version of the script above:
<?php
// the files
$xmlfile = "person.xml";
$xslfile = "person.xsl";
// create the XSLT processor
$xslthandler = xslt_create() or die("Houston, we
have a problem. No XSLT
handler available. Mission aborted.");
// process the two files to get the desired output
xslt_run($xslthandler, $xslfile,
$xmlfile);
// get and print the result
echo xslt_fetch_result($xslthandler);
// free the resources occupied by the handlers
xslt_free($xslthandler);
?>
This is a slightly more structured approach. After defining the filenames for
the XML and XSLT content, I've used the xslt_create() function to create a new
instance of the XSLT processor and return a handle to it.
// create the XSLT processor
$xslthandler = xslt_create() or die("Houston, we
have a problem. No XSLT
handler available. Mission aborted.");
This handle is used in all subsequent XSLT operations.
Next, I've used the xslt_run() function to read and process the XML and XSLT
files, and store the results of the processing in the default result buffer.
// process the two files to get the desired output
xslt_run($xslthandler, $xslfile,
$xmlfile);
Once the processing is complete and the output dumped into the default result
buffer, I've used the xslt_fetch_result() function to fetch the contents of the
buffer and print it to the browser.
// get and print the result
echo xslt_fetch_result($xslthandler);
Finally, it's a good idea to clean things up by destroying the handle created
during this process, so as to not occupy valuable memory.
// free the resources occupied by the handlers
xslt_free($xslthandler);
The xslt_free() function frees up the memory occupied by the XSLT processor.
Using xslt_run() is often preferable to using xslt_process(), since the xslt_run()
function is happy to accept file references to the XML and XSLT data as arguments
(as opposed to xslt_process(), which only accepts string variables). Using xslt_run()
can, therefore, often save you a few lines of code when performing server-side
transformation with PHP.
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