CHAPTER 10

Tutorial: Displaying 

10

XML Data 

This tutorial shows you how to create a web page that displays XML data. 

Displaying XML data involves retrieving information stored in a local or 

remote XML file and rendering that information on the page. The key 

benefit to using XML data on web pages is separating content from 

presentation. That is, the content of your page (the data) is kept 

completely separate from the page's presentation (the layout, text styling, 

and so forth). As such, anyone can work in the XML file without having to 

alter the presentation page, and vice versa.

Although it's not necessary, you should have some familiarity with 

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) before completing this tutorial. If you don't, 

you might want to complete 

Chapter 6,  Tutorial: Formatting Your Page 

with CSS,  on page 99

.

In this tutorial you will complete the following tasks:

Locate your files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  174

Review your task  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  175

Learn about using XML and XSL with web pages . . . . . . . . . . . .  176

Learn about XSLT pages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  178

Convert an HTML page to an XSLT page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179

Attach an XML data source to the XSLT page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180

Alter the XSLT page layout . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .181

Bind XML data to the XSLT page  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183

Apply styles to the XML data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185

Create a dynamic link  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186

Add a Repeat Region XSLT object . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188

Attach the XSLT page to the XML page. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .191

Learn about other deployment options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194

173