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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