Learning XSLT: A Hands-On Introduction to XSLT and XPath

While XSLT isn't a complex language, its declarative and template-based nature can make harder than expected to learn it, especially for people used to procedural languages. That's why a book like this, which provides a solid introduction to XSLT, may be more valuable than you would expect. The author manages to assemble an entry-level book without writing another useless "for dummies" guide. Fitzgerald filled the book with a huge amount of practical examples; you get plenty of code listings that often build on top of each other; incrementing the complexity along the way (an effective choice). In my opinion the writing style isn't always crystal clear and the author often introduce topics too early, briefly mentioning things that get a full explanation only a few chapters later. Notwithstanding this shortcoming, I think it's an excellent book that can really help getting started with XSLT. I would suggest to read it in a linear fashion, from beginning to the end in order to get the best out of it.

Good book.

I know O'Reilly books are supposed to be more advanced than other offerings, but the O'Reilly "sub-series" Learning XYZ generally tends to take it a bit easier on beginners. This book really fails to be tutorial in nature and digresses into deeper subjects rather quickly. Not recommeded for beginners, so don't be fooled by the title inference.

Very good informaion

The author seems to have no sympathy for the reader. Many statements are made that the author says he will explain later, and herein lies the weakness of the book. The author does not provide context for the introduction of new constructs. For example, in 2.2 "Literal Results Elements", he begins, "A literal result element is any XML element that is represented literally in a template, is not in the XSLT namespace, and is written literally onto the result tree when processed." I'm sure that may be an important point, but as introduced, I have no idea what problem, if any, this addresses. There is no context for the introduction of the construct and I can see no use for it at all. Would it take too much time explain how this is a tool I might be interested in? I want my money back.

Late one evening last week I was stuck needing to write some XSL code before an important deadline the next day. Having never written any XSL before, I turned to "Learning XSLT." After spending about two hours studying the excellent examples in the book, I was able to complete the stylesheet I needed which contains about 100 lines of code and 10 templates. I highly recommend the book to anyone needing to get up-to-speed quickly on XSLT.

I used this book to learn XSLT while commuting back and forth on bus. I like O'Reilly books because they are fairly well edited and not expanded with useless verbiage to fill retail shelf space. This book generally fufills that expectation. I learned the XSLT and with DITA have now written thousands of lines of templates to create documentation production processes. My only complaint was that even when I read it, the book is XSLT 1.0 and dated as it only presents powerful XSLT 2.0 features in an appendix. Grouping, for instance, is supported by XSLT 2.0, and although solved in 1.0 is much simpler. That aside, the book is still useful as a fairly concise introduction. Much still applies, and one can find the 2.0 features documented in detail online.My single glaring complaint is that the author started the chapter on Conditional Processing by illustrating it with FORTRAN 77. Yikes! Anyone who knows FORTRAN 77 wouldn't need the explanation, and anyone who needs the explanation could only be confused by FORTRAN 77. (Same goes for the repetitive example on the same page using Java.) Fortunately, that is the only page in 352 that used programming languages as a didactic method. Experiment tried, experiment failed. The rest of the book is characterized by clear explanations for an otherwise educated user. I just might not spend a lot of time pondering 1.0 techniques, such as grouping, that are supported so well in XSLT 2.0, unless you need to work with a 1.0 processor.

Learning XSLT was a helpful introduction to XSLT and I really enjoyed my progress through the book. Mr. Fitzgerald doesn't spend too much time on lengthy explanations. Simple explanations are followed by illustrative examples that you should type and run yourself.

I'm not a huge fan of O'Reilly books - I purchased this because it looked like the best of a bad bunch. To be fair, however, it is actually very good. The author explains things well enough and covers as much as one would need to know to reach an intermediate level with XSLT. It also provides information on versions other than 1.0 and the variety of XML/XSL processors out there.Although this book provides a guide of sorts for XML, it does get complex at times and it's easy to become lost in a sea of jargon - so I would advise that if you haven't already got some experience or knowledge of XML, then you should get a good book on the subject (John Shelley's How to use XML is excellent).The only fault I could attribute to this book is that the subject of namespaces, while present, is not covered in any great depth - but it's still a fine piece of work that I would recommend to anybody intending to be doing what it says on the cover.

This was required reading on my course last year. It's a fairly good introduction if you already have some familliarity with XML. Strangely in the first few chapters some simple concepts are presented in a quite confusing way. More complex examples later in the book are much easier to get to grips with. As the previous reviewer noted the examination of namespaces is superficial, unfortunate as this is an extremely important area. However, while not comprehensive enough to be a working reference it is a good beginning.

since xslt 1.0 is still quite common then it's pretty relevant, covers a lot but it's pretty dull, but then how much can you say about xslt before it gets kind of dull, it's practical I guess.

It is a comprehensive descrizione of xslt. Chapters are of the right size.Maybe it lacks of some features on Xslfo. Useful

Il libro è datato ma trattandosi di xslt è ancora attuale, ottimo approccio alla spigazione dei concetti.valido per imparare in fretta la tecnologia.