[Omaha.pm] [OT] Parsing XML with command line XSLT xsltproc...

Fri Feb 5 23:33:00 PST 2010

Tools that understand XSL are ubiquitous ... I sure wouldn't recommend 
down-loading or writing some code (Perl or otherwise), and then manually 
going through the process of running the RSS through your code, and then 
re-loading the output into your player.  Foist the work off on the 
machines/devices, I say :

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" 
xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

 <xsl:output method="html"/>

 <xsl:template match="/" >
  <html>
   <body>
    <xsl:for-each select="//channel">
     <table>
      <tr>
       <th style="text-align: center;">
        <a>
         <xsl:attribute name="href">
          <xsl:value-of select="link" />
         </xsl:attribute>
         <xsl:value-of select="title" />
        </a>
       </th>
      </tr>
       <tr>
        <td style="text-align: center; font-size: smaller;">
         Last Updated on <xsl:value-of select="pubDate" />
        </td>
       </tr>
       <tr>
        <td>
         <hr />
        </td>
       </tr>
      <xsl:for-each select="item">
       <tr>
        <td style="text-align: left;">
         <a>
          <xsl:attribute name="href">
           <xsl:value-of select="link" />
          </xsl:attribute>
          <xsl:value-of select="title" />
         </a>
        </td>
       </tr>
       <tr>
        <td>
         <xsl:value-of select="description" disable-output-escaping="yes" />
        </td>
       </tr>
       <tr>
        <td>
         <hr />
        </td>
       </tr>
      </xsl:for-each>
     </table>
    </xsl:for-each>
   </body>
  </html>
 </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

XSL is your friend.  Resistance is futile.  You will be assimilated.

:)

Pat
-- 
Patrick Timmins
ptimmins at cox.net

Dan Linder wrote:
> 2010/2/1 Sterling Hanenkamp <sterling at hanenkamp.com>:
>   
>> I hope you'll forgive me, but I'm going to be annoying and not answer your
>> question in the way that you asked. I dislike XSLT, so I'd use:
>> XML::RSS
>> XML::Twig
>> Or something else on CPAN
>>     
>
> Completely understood - my only reason for using it is because
> "bashpodder" used it in it's main script and I had a small bit of
> sample XSL code to look at. :-)
>
> I'm always up for trying to solve a problem with a new tool, and in
> this case you're probably right that Perl and/or a CPAN module might
> be the best solution.  I'll look into these.
>
>   
>> I used to do XSLT, particularly when I was mostly stuck working with Java.
>> Then, (after cutting off my Java) I realized that if I wanted a
>> Turing-complete template language, I already have Perl. Performance is about
>> the same, Perl has more features, and I don't have to use XML to write code.
>>     
>
> This is actually my first foray into XSLT.  Any XML I've ever
> generated or parsed were from my own home-grown Perl scripts that
> didn't use any CPAN modules...  (Thankfully I could control the format
> of the data I was reading so nesting and other text formatting didn't
> affect these tests..)
>
> Thanks,
>
> Dan
>   