Question

Handling XML & XSLT in Java

Asked by: _TAD_

I am a lead systems engineer that has been away from heads-down coding for a couple of years now so my recollection is a bit foggy.  

I have a coder who is developing in Java and needs to apply an XSL Transform to an XML string before posting the string to a web service.  As this coder has never used XML/XSLT before I want to keep this as simple as possible.


For the sake of an example, suppose the coder has:

String xmlText = "<XML><ROW><ORGID>Business Name</ORGID><ID>12345</ID></ROW></XML>";

I will have him write an XSLT file that simply changes the names of the fields so that the resultant string is:

String postTransform "<XML><ROW><BusinessUnit>Business Name</BusinessUnit><PrimaryKey>12345</PrimaryKey></ROW></XML>";

I remember enough of the XSLT code to be useful, but my background was in C# and C++, not Java -- so I'm at a bit of a loss on the most efficient method for opening and applying the XSLT document to the XML string.

I really just need something quick, dirty and efficient.  I would prefer to not have to incorporate the entire XMLDOM architecture to apply a simple transform.

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Asked On
2009-11-05 at 11:31:15ID24875723
Tags

Java

,

XML

,

XSLT

Topic

Java Programming Language

Participating Experts
5
Points
500
Comments
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Answers

 

by: MRomaniPosted on 2009-11-05 at 11:47:04ID: 25753156

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-11-05 at 12:01:11ID: 25753309

See the following for the basis of tranformations

 

by: CEHJPosted on 2009-11-05 at 12:01:22ID: 25753313

 

by: TomasHelgiPosted on 2009-11-05 at 13:11:55ID: 25754087

           Hi!

Here are some XML Transform examples you can look at
http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/XML/Transform.htm
And here are some other XML examples  
http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/XML/CatalogXML.htm

Hope this helps.

Regards,
     Tomas Helgi

 

by: objectsPosted on 2009-11-05 at 14:11:30ID: 25754617

 

by: _TAD_Posted on 2009-11-05 at 20:23:15ID: 25756603

To clarify:

  I *already* understand XML and XSLT -  that is not the issue.

I have an XML string in JAVA that I want to apply the XSLT to while "on the fly".

I don't want to create an XML document and attach the XSLT to it.  I don't want to have to spool anything off to the physical drive.  

In fact, we may be using this XSLT for a relatively large volume of XML text in a batch form.  Ideally I'd like to be able to cache the XSLT text in memory and perform the transforms without spooling everything out to the heavy XMLDOM class.

 

by: objectsPosted on 2009-11-05 at 20:30:53ID: 25756622

use the following (to create dom) in conjunction with what I posted in the link above

http://helpdesk.objects.com.au/java/how-do-i-create-a-dom-document-from-an-xml-string

you can load the xsl from memory using a similar technique ie change the source

 

by: TomasHelgiPosted on 2009-11-06 at 00:29:03ID: 25757519

     Hi!

The javax.xml.transform.stream.StreamSource as seen in this example

http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/XML/XMLtransformation.htm
and the API
http://java.sun.com/j2ee/1.4/docs/api/javax/xml/transform/stream/StreamSource.html

has a InputStream as input in one of it's constructors.
That way you can take the "on the fly"-data and pass it to the Transformation class as a byte-stream
and transform it on the fly. :)

Hope this helps.

Regards,
    Tomas Helgi

 

by: rrz@871311Posted on 2009-11-06 at 20:31:34ID: 25764994

>As this coder has never used XML/XSLT before I want to keep this as simple as possible.
Does he use JSP ? If yes, then he could use JSTL XML  tags   Once you set things up, he could use something like

<%@   taglib  prefix="c" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" %>
<%@   taglib  prefix="x" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/xml"  %>
 <c:import   url="text.xml"    var="doc" />
 <c:import   url="xslTest.xsl"    var="xsl" />
 <x:transform  xml="${doc}" xslt="${xsl}"  />  

See
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jstl0520/  
http://www.roseindia.net/jstl/jstlxmltags.shtml  

 

by: rrz@871311Posted on 2009-11-06 at 20:50:38ID: 25765031

>I have an XML string in JAVA that I want to apply the XSLT to while "on the fly".  
You could use  

<c:set   value="${xmlText}"    var="doc" />
<c:import   url="xslTest.xsl"    var="xsl" />
 <x:transform  xml="${doc}" xslt="${xsl}"  />  

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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