Using XSLT 2.0: XmlPrime

Loading the Input Document

In this example we will be using the bstore1.example.com/bib.xml document as described in XML Query Use Cases. The document is as follows:

<bib>
    <book year="1994">
        <title>TCP/IP Illustrated</title>
        <author><last>Stevens</last><first>W.</first></author>
        <publisher>Addison-Wesley</publisher>
        <price>65.95</price>
    </book>
 
    <book year="1992">
        <title>Advanced Programming in the Unix environment</title>
        <author><last>Stevens</last><first>W.</first></author>
        <publisher>Addison-Wesley</publisher>
        <price>65.95</price>
    </book>
 
    <book year="2000">
        <title>Data on the Web</title>
        <author><last>Abiteboul</last><first>Serge</first></author>
        <author><last>Buneman</last><first>Peter</first></author>
        <author><last>Suciu</last><first>Dan</first></author>
        <publisher>Morgan Kaufmann Publishers</publisher>
        <price>39.95</price>
    </book>
 
    <book year="1999">
        <title>The Economics of Technology and Content for Digital TV</title>
        <editor>
               <last>Gerbarg</last><first>Darcy</first>
                <affiliation>CITI</affiliation>
        </editor>
            <publisher>Kluwer Academic Publishers</publisher>
        <price>129.95</price>
    </book>
 
</bib>

This document is assumed to be in the file bib.xml.

First, we create a new XmlNameTable XmlNameTable XmlNameTable instance. This will be used to share information such as element and attribute names between the XML documents and the transformation. Next we create an XmlReaderSettings XmlReaderSettings XmlReaderSettings instance and set its NameTable NameTable NameTable property.

XmlNameTable nameTable = new NameTable();

XmlReaderSettings xmlReaderSettings = new XmlReaderSettings();
xmlReaderSettings.NameTable = nameTable;

Warning

In order for XmlPrime to work correctly all documents passed in to the transformation must be loaded with the XmlNameTable XmlNameTable XmlNameTable used to compile the transformation.

In order to transform the document we load it into an XdmDocument XdmDocument XdmDocument. For more information about document representations, see Document Representations.

XdmDocument document;

using (XmlReader reader = XmlReader.Create("bib.xml", xmlReaderSettings))
{
    document = new XdmDocument(reader);
}

Compiling a Transformation

We will run the following transformation over our document, which returns the books in ascending order of price.

<xsl:stylesheet version="2.0"
                xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"
                xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"
                xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
                
  <xsl:template match="/bib">
    <xsl:copy>
      <xsl:for-each select="book">
        <xsl:sort select="xs:decimal(price)"/>
        <xsl:copy-of select="."/>
      </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:copy>
  </xsl:template>
  
</xsl:stylesheet>

This document is assumed to be in the file bib.xsl.

The next stage is to compile the transformation. In order to describe how the transformation should be compiled we need set up an XsltSettings XsltSettings XsltSettings object. This describes all the settings used for compilation. In particular, we will set the name table used by the transformation to match the one we used earlier and we will set the context item type. By default the context item type is set to none, and so the context item cannot be set unless we override the type here. We can then compile the transformation using the Compile Compile Compile method. This returns us an Xslt Xslt Xslt object encapsulating the transformation.

XsltSettings querySettings = new XsltSettings(nameTable);
querySettings.ContextItemType = XdmType.Node;

Xslt query = Xslt.Compile("bib.xsl", querySettings);

Executing the Transformation

Now we have our query object we now just need to execute it. We will use the ApplyTemplates ApplyTemplates ApplyTemplates method to initiate a transformation by applying templates in the default mode and serializing the primary result document to a stream.

XPathNavigator contextItem = document.CreateNavigator();

Stream result = new MemoryStream();
xslt.ApplyTemplates(contextItem,result);

Security note

For security reasons, by default the doc and collection functions always raise an error. This behaviour is changed by setting the DocumentSet DocumentSet DocumentSet property on the DynamicContextSettings DynamicContextSettings DynamicContextSettings. See Loading External Resources for more information.

Note

The CallTemplate CallTemplate CallTemplate methods might also be used, depending on the required initiation options.