Bits and Pieces

Modular XSLT, part 2: Simple export

As you know you can export or request data from FileMaker in XML and then transform the XML using a XSLT stylesheet into some other format. The question is: how do you approach writing such a stylesheet? Are there some universal techniques? Can you save some effort?

Here's a general tutorial, covering a basic export to simple XML format. As you'll see it isn't just a look-ma-it's-XML sample, but more like a foundation for any many well, at least some XSL-transformation problems.

The tutorial assumes you know XSLT basics and maybe have even tried to export something from FileMaker using the built-in XSLT processor. For example, you must understand what <xsl:temlplate> or <xsl:param> are for. If you don't know XLST, you might want to start from some XSLT Tutorial, like this quick one by W3Schools or that more detailed one by Zvon; this is where I started.

Technorati Tags: FileMaker

Use modular XSLT to simplify importing XML data into FileMaker

A simple XSLT file encapsulates the target FileMaker grammar into easy-to-use parameterized templates; once written, the file can power any import task with no changes.

To import XML data into FileMaker you have to write:

• Elements of the source grammar;
• Elements of the target grammar, FMPXMLRESULT;
• A list of instructions to transform the former into the latter.

You can put all of this into a single file and it will work; almost all XSLT samples are written this way. But as you face more and more complex import task, you start seeing the drawbacks of this approach:

• You'll have to repeat all the verbose syntax of the target grammar for every XSLT file you write;
• A mix of source and target elements and XSLT instructions can become hardly readable, that is error-prone and difficult to manage.

The universal way to manage complexity is to break something complex into modules that hide all the complexity beneath a simple interface. Let see how it can be done with XSLT.