Fast Track to XML and XSLT Training

We offer private customized training for groups of 3 or more attendees.

Course Description

 
This course is an intensive, hands-on introduction to XML, XPath, and XSLT. The course is a balanced mixture of theory and practical labs designed to take students from the basic fundamentals of XML right through to the advanced XML technologies. The students are walked through the different standards in a structured manner to enable them to master the concepts and ideas, which are reinforced in the lab exercises. The course starts with the fundamentals of XML, including coverage of either DTDs or XML Schema. It then moves on to the XPath and XSLT standards, and how to use them to transform XML documents into other documents such as HTML documents or other XML documents.
Course Length: 3 Days
Course Tuition: $1290 (US)

Prerequisites

Familiarity with Web and data processing concepts. Fundamentals of XML.

Course Outline

 
Introduction to XML
XML Defined
Benefits of Using XML, comparison to HTML
SGML and the origins of XML.
 
The XML standard and how it relates to the other standards (XSL, XPath, DOM, SAX, etc).
Some real life XML applications.
The XML Document
Structure of the XML document.
The document body
Elements, tags, and attributes.
Prolog, XML Declaration and PIs.
Entities, CDATA
Well-formed XML
XML syntax and parsing.
 
Namespaces
The Motivating Problem
The Namespace Solution (Definition, qualified names, URIs, prefixes)
Namespace scope and overriding
Default Namespaces
Namespaces and Attributes
 
Valid XML Documents
Definition of a valid document
Definition of a schema
Schema Languages
 
XML Schema
General Form of an XML Schema
Elements, Attributes and Types
Element Definitions
Simple Types
Primitive and Derived Datatypes
Complex Types - Sequence, Choice, All
Element Occurrence Constraints
Attribute Definitions
Attribute Occurrence Constraints
SimpleContent Type
Using XML Schema with Namespaces
 
The Document Type Definition (DTD) Overview
The role and functions of a DTD.
Specifying internal and external DTDs.
Overview of DTD structure
Specifying internal and external entities.
Comparison of XML Schema to DTD
Since DTDs are being phased out in favor of XML Schemas, we present only an overview here
 
XML Schema Advanced Topics
Element and Attribute Group Definitions
Defining New Types
Facets
Defining new Simple Types by Restriction, Enumeration, List, Union
Defining new Complex Types by Extension and Restriction
Generic Types
 
XPath (XML Path Language)
Overview of the XPath standard.
XPath data model – why we need it.
Tree addressing and node types.
XPath Expressions
Working with location paths – step by step.
Absolute and relative location paths
Axis specifiers, predicates, and functions
Lab: Node Trees, Names, String-values
Lab: Location Paths and Axes
Lab: Predicates, Functions, Operators
 
XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) Basics
XSLT Overview and History
Stylesheets, Templates, and the XSLT Process
Processing child nodes
Default templates
Writing templates – xsl:template
Continuing Processing – xsl:apply-templates
Lab: Default Template Rules
Lab: Writing Templates
 
Transforming XML to XML
xsl:copy-of
xsl:copy
Pruning the result tree
Attribute Value Templates
Controlling output with xsl:output
Whitespace handling
Lab: Pruning the Source Tree
Lab: Creating a summary XML document
 
Transforming XML to HTML
Fundamental approach
HTML elements in an XML document
Basic HTML Tables
Considerations in generating tables
Lab: Transforming an XML order document to HTML
 
Conditional Processing
Overview
xsl:if
xsl:choose, xsl:when, xsl:otherwise
Lab: Using Conditional Processing

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