Re: [xsl] passing arguments in the xml-stylesheet line

[Mike Brown <mike at skew dot org>]

Todd Binder wrote:
> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="training_city.xsl"?>
> 
> is it possible to pass an argument to the given XSL file that would be
> interpreted within the XSL file with the <xsl:para name="city"/>

That's a processing instruction, and it technically has only 2 parts:
the target ("xml-stylesheet") and the instruction (the string that comes
after the target, starting with "type=...")

There is a W3C Recommendation that dictates the semantics of the
xml-stylesheet processing instruction. It says that this p.i. is used
to associate an XML document with a stylesheet, and that the instruction
is formatted to look like attributes (pseudo-attributes, they call 'em),
which can be used by the application receiving the instruction string
from the XML parser. One of the attributes is the "type" which should
be an IANA-registered Internet media type (which excludes text/xsl,
despite Microsoft's insistence on using it here) for the stylesheet,
and another attribute is the "href" pointing to the stylesheet.

No other pseudo-attributes or semantics are mandated by the W3C for
the xml-stylesheet p.i., so it falls on the application (Internet
Explorer w/MSXML, in your case), to provide its own mechanisms for
additional functionality.

> so the line in my XML file would look like the following...
> <?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="training_city.xsl?city=5921"?>

There is nothing stopping IE from recognizing such a thing, or using
some other pseudo-attribute or another processing instruction to 
pass the parameter, but to my knowledge, it does not do so.

> i am aware that i could use ASP along with the Msxml2.DOMDocument to
> addParameters to an XSL file, but i wanted to see if i could do it from
> command-like syntax, and avoid having to use ASP.

I think you're out of luck. The xml-stylesheet p.i. is for a simple
association of an XML document with a stylesheet.

   - Mike
____________________________________________________________________________
  mike j. brown, fourthought.com  |  xml/xslt: http://skew.org/xml/
  denver/boulder, colorado, usa   |  personal: http://hyperreal.org/~mike/

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