Transforming XML with XSL Stylesheets

The eXtensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) enables you to perform transformations on the contents of an XML document. The .NET classes support the W3C XSL Transformations (XSLT) specification.

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To learn more details about XSL, visit the W3C Web site at http://www.w3.org/style/xsl.

XSL has several applications. One common use for XSL stylesheets is converting an XML representation of data into nicely formatted HTML that can be displayed in a browser. For example, you can take an XML document that represents a list of recipes and, by using different XSL stylesheets, display the same information in different ways. You might want to display only the recipes for breakfast foods , or you might want to display the recipes in a particular order.

Another use of XSL is for data format conversion. If you have an application that requires data to be organized with a particular format, you can use XSL to convert an XML document into the correct format for the application. In other words, XSL enables you to easily share information between different applications.

You can use XSL stylesheets from within an ASP.NET application in two ways: You can use the ASP.NET Xml control, or you can use the XSLTransform class. You explore both methods in the following sections.