Java and XML

What’s Next?

We have now created a complete, functional, XSL stylesheet. You should have a pretty good idea of how to manipulate XML data and transform that data, as well as how to create new data within an XSL stylesheet. In order to use the pairing of XML and XSL, though, we need an XSLT processor. The XSLT processor, in our case written in Java, will handle the actual transformation and generate the output of our stylesheet being applied to our XML document. In the next chapter, we look at using XSLT processors, both from a command line in a standalone fashion and from within Java programs. We will also delve into the Document Object Model (DOM) to see how it is used to generate XML data in a format suitable for input into an XSLT processor. We will then end the book’s section on basic XML syntax and use by seeing how all the parts of XML we have looked at so far can be assembled and used within larger XML applications.