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Fun with XML-based web development.

N

notfred

Lifer
This is a work in progress, but we have a lot of web-developer types here who might find it interesting.

Here is a link to a scientific report.

These files are all automatically generated by a small .NET windows program from this XML file and this XSLT stylesheet. This means that gonig from plaintext to a finished product takes about 30 seconds per report, which is a lot faster than the current 3 days or so that it currently takes. It also results in much nicer output. This isn't finished ytet, and it already looks better than pretty much anything the USGS has ever put on the internet.

Reducing a three day process to a 30 second process should result in a significant cost savings for report production. Also, we're gonig to be adding bunch of new cool features to the online reports that will make them more interesting and easier to read, as well.

Anyway, even if you're not interested in the mechanics of it all ,you can at least say what you think of the way the report looks. 🙂
 
Looks nice man. I've made heavy use of XSLT on many ocassions, but that's a fairly substantial stylesheet by any standard, imo.

 
Yeah, it's a fairly substantial stylesheet (about 570 lines now, I think), but it's working pretty well, and I think it's been worth the effort, considering the output.
 
I had to maintain an app that consisted of tons of xslt pages and it was in asp and would send xml through to them and debugging it was simply a fvcking nightmare. The author regretted using them in the manner he did 😀
 
Looks very nice (I don't mean just the presentation). I have a question though...I looked through the xslt and I get the gist of it, but how excatly does it go from that to html? Does the server interpret these pages at runtime?



Also, I just noticed (and installed) your AT-Greasemonkey script. Great work :thumbsup:

edit: you should include "http://forums.anandtech.com/today.aspx*" in the default script.
 
Originally posted by: Martin
Looks very nice (I don't mean just the presentation). I have a question though...I looked through the xslt and I get the gist of it, but how excatly does it go from that to html? Does the server interpret these pages at runtime?



Also, I just noticed (and installed) your AT-Greasemonkey script. Great work :thumbsup:

edit: you should include "http://forums.anandtech.com/today.aspx*" in the default script.
Click to expand...

The XSLT stylesheet is applied to the XML source file by a program I wrote. That program does the conversion to HTML, and then plain HTML files can be uploaded to the server.

I'll look into the 'today.aspx' page for the next revision of the greasemonkey script.
 
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