An Evening At The Moulin Rouge - XML

So you've got your XML, and you've also got an XSLT stylesheet to format it. But how do you put the two of them together? Fear not - you can use PHP's Sablotron extension to perform XSLT transformation of XML data on the server. This article tells you how.

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By: Harish Kamath, (c) Melonfire

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Rating:

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November 30, 2001

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TOOLS YOU CAN USE

What you've just seen is a generic way to process XML data with PHP. It isn't the only one, though; for larger, more complex files, PHP offers yet another method of applying an XSLT stylesheet to your XML.

Consider the following XML file:

<?xml version="1.0"?>









<review id="57" category="2">









 <title>Moulin Rouge</title>









 <cast>

  <person>Nicole Kidman</person>

  <person>Ewan McGregor</person>

 

 <person>John 

Leguizamo</person>

  <person>Jim Broadbent</person>

 

 <person>Richard 

Roxburgh</person>

 </cast>









 <director>Baz Luhrmann</director>









 <duration>120</duration>









 <genre>Romance/Comedy</genre>









 <year>2001</year>









 <body>

A stylishly spectacular extravaganza, <title>Moulin Rouge</title> 

is hard

to categorize; it is, at different times, a love story, a costume drama, 

a

musical, and a comedy. Director <person>Baz Luhrmann</person> (well-known

for 

the very hip <title>William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet</title>) has

taken 

some simple themes - love, jealousy and obsession - and done

something completely 

new and different with them by setting them to music.

 </body>









 <rating>5</rating>









 <teaser>Baz Luhrmann's over-the-top 

 vision of Paris at the turn of the

century 

is witty, sexy...and completely unforgettable</teaser>









</review>

And the corresponding XSLT stylesheet to transform this information into a simple Web page:

<?xml version="1.0"?>









<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0"

xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">









<xsl:template match="/review">

 <html>

 <head>

 <basefont face="Arial" 

size="2"/>

 </head>

 <body>

 <xsl:apply-templates select="title"/> (<xsl:apply-templates

select="year"/>)

 <br 

/>

 <xsl:apply-templates select="teaser"/>

 <p />

 <xsl:apply-templates 

select="cast"/>

 <br />

 <xsl:apply-templates select="director"/>

 <br 

/>

 <xsl:apply-templates select="duration"/>

 <br />

 <xsl:apply-templates 

select="rating"/>

 <p>

 <xsl:apply-templates select="body"/>

 </p>

 </body>

 </html>

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="title">

<b><xsl:value-of select="." /></b>

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="teaser">

<xsl:value-of select="." />

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="director">

<b>Director: </b> <xsl:value-of 

select="." />

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="duration">

<b>Duration: </b> <xsl:value-of 

select="." /> minutes

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="rating">

<b>Our rating: </b> <xsl:value-of 

select="." />

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="cast">

<b>Cast: </b>

<xsl:apply-templates/>

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="person[position() != last()]">

<xsl:value-of select="." 

/>,

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="person[position() = (last()-1)]">

<xsl:value-of select="." 

/>

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="person[position() = last()]">

and <xsl:value-of select="." 

/>

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="body">

 <xsl:apply-templates/>

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="body//title">

 <i><xsl:value-of select="." /></i>

</xsl:template>









<xsl:template match="body//person">

 <b><xsl:value-of select="." /></b>

</xsl:template>









</xsl:stylesheet>

Here's the PHP script which brings the two together:

<?php









// XML file

$xmlstringarray = file("movie.xml");









// XSL file

// note that you may need to specify an absolute path here

$xslfile 

= "movie.xsl";









// start transforming...

xslt_output_begintransform($xslfile);









 for($count=0; $count<sizeof($xmlstringarray); $count++)

 {

 echo $xmlstringarray[$count];

 }









// end transformation and output

xslt_output_endtransform();

?>

I'll start by storing the content of the XML file in an array.

// XML file

$xmlstringarray = file("movie.xml");

Next, I'll store the location of the XSLT file in a variable.

// XSL file

// note that you may need to specify an absolute path here

$xslfile 

= "movie.xsl";

Finally, it's time to call the xslt_output_begintransform() function.

xslt_output_begintransform($xslfile);









 for($count = 0;$count < sizeof($xmlstringarray); $count++)

 {

 echo $xmlstringarray[$count];

 }









xslt_output_endtransform();

The xslt_output_begintransform() function is a special function which take only one parameter: the location of the XSLT file. Once this function is invoked, the XSLT processor will transform all the content that it encounters as per the rules in the named file until it's told to stop via the function xslt_output_endtransform().

In this case, I've written a simple "for" loop to iterate through the elements of the XML array, printing each element as it finds it. The XSLT processor will transform this output as it is printed, providing the desired result.

This technique comes in particularly handy if you don't have your XML data in a static file, but generate it dynamically - say, from a database, or by combining multiple XML documents into a single file. You can write PHP code to obtain the data and massage it into an XML-compliant format, and then enclose that code in calls to xslt_output_begintransform() and xslt_output_endtransform() to transform it.

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