Documentation for the XSL Tag Library

1. INTRODUCTION

The XSL custom tag library contains an working examples of the tags described in the JavaServerPages specification, Version 1.1. As such, the tags are focused more on being examples of custom tag library code techniques, and less on being useful in production applications.

With this custom tag library you can process a XML document with a XSL stylesheet and insert it in place.

2. PREREQUISITE SOFTWARE

A servlet container that supports the JavaServer Pages Specification, version 1.1.
The binary distributions of the packages :
The Apache Xerces XML parser.
The Apache Xalan XSL processor.
this can be found at http://xml.apache.org/dist, we recommend that you use the version of the Xerces library that comes with the Xalan binary distribution

3. CONFIGURATION INFORMATION

Follow these steps to configure your web application with this tag library:

Copy the tag library descriptor file (xsl/xsl.tld) to the /WEB-INF subdirectory of your web application.
Copy the tag library JAR file (xsl/xsl.jar) to the /WEB-INF/lib subdirectory of your web application.
Copy the support libs xerces.jar and xalan.jar to the /WEB-INF/lib directory of your web application.

Add a <taglib> element to your web application deployment descriptor in /WEB-INF/web.xml like this:

    <taglib>
        <taglib-uri>http://jakarta.apache.org/taglibs/xsl-1.0</taglib-uri>
	<taglib-location>/WEB-INF/xsl.tld</taglib-location>
    </taglib>

To use the tags from this library in your JSP pages, add the following directive at the top of each page:

    <%@ taglib uri="http://jakarta.apache.org/taglibs/xsl-1.0" prefix="x" %>

where "x" is the tag name prefix you wish to use for tags from this library. You can change this value to any prefix you like.

4. TAG DOCUMENTATION

This custom tag library includes several tags, with the following characteristics:

4.1 The "InsertWithXSL" tag

This tag inserts a XML document previously transformed by a XSL stylesheet into the output of the current page.

Attribute	Description	Required
url	The URL of XML document to be inserted in place	Yes
xsl	The URL of XSL formatting stylesheet aplied to the XML document before inserting	Yes

4.2 The "return" tag

This tag flush the output buffers of the page, this is an utility tag. This not have any attributes

4.3 The "clearresponse" tag

This tag clears the output buffers of the page, this is an utility tag. This not have any attributes

5. USAGE EXAMPLES

See the example application (xsl/xsl-examples.war) for examples of the usage of the tags from this custom tag library.