XML Transforms: XSLT (2)

• XSLT "templates" can be used to breakdown the code hierarchically as a set of nested matching rules, just like procedure and function calls are used for the same purpose in imperative (sequential) langages like Pascal, Java or ObjectPAL

  <xsl:template name="showMessage">
    <xsl:param name="message">Message inconnu</xsl:param>
    <xsl:value-of select="substring-after($message, ':')" />:
    <dl>
      <xsl:for-each select=
        "/wsdl:definitions/wsdl:message[@name=substring-after($message, ':')]/wsdl:part" > 
        <dt><xsl:value-of select="@name" /></dt>
        <dd><xsl:value-of select="substring-after(@type, ':')" /></dd>
        </xsl:for-each>
      </dl>
    </xsl:template>

• Note that expressions in the select attribute of XSLT cnstructs are XPath expressions.
• In spite of the peculiarities of functional programming and the XML-based syntax, a bit uneasy at first, most control structures from traditional 3GLs are available, like the for loop highlighted in this example, that iterates over the results of an XPath selection