Read XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference, 4th Edition Online
Authors: Michael Kay
XSLT 2.0 and XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference, 4th Edition (785 page)
Additional Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
| async | Boolean | True if the document is to be loaded asynchronously. |
| parseError | IXMLDOMParseError | The last parser error. |
| readyState | Long | Current state of readiness for use. Used when loading asynchronously. The values are Uninitialized (0), Loading (1), Loaded (2), Interactive (3), and Completed (4). |
| validateOnParse | Boolean | Requests validation of the document against its DTD or schema. |
IXMLDOMNode
This object represents a node in the document tree. Note that the tree conforms to the DOM model, which is not always the same as the XPath model described in Chapter 2; for example, the way namespaces are modeled is different, and text nodes are not necessarily normalized.
There are subclasses of
IXMLDOMNode
for all the different kinds of node found in the tree. I have not included descriptions of all these, since they are not directly relevant to XSLT and XPath processing. The only subclass I have included is
IXMLDOMDocument
, which can be regarded as representing either the whole document or its root node, depending on your point of view.
Methods
The methods available on
IXMLDOMNode
that are relevant to XSLT and XPath processing are listed below. Most often, these methods will be applied to the root node (the DOM
Document
object), but they can be applied to any node.
| Name | Returns | Description |
| selectNodes | IXMLDOMNodeList | Executes an XPath expression and returns a list of matching nodes. |
| selectSingleNode | IXMLDOMNode | Executes an XPath expression and returns the first matching node. |
| transformNode | String | Applies a stylesheet to the subtree rooted at this node, returning the result as a string. The argument identifies the XSLT stylesheet. This will usually be a Document , but it may be a Node representing an embedded stylesheet within a Document . The serialized result of the transformation is returned as a string of characters (the |
| transformNodeToObject | (Nothing) | Applies a stylesheet to the subtree, placing the result into a supplied document or stream. The difference between this and transformNode() is that the destination of the transformation is supplied as a second argument. This will usually be a Document . It may also be a Stream . |
Properties
The most useful properties are listed below. Properties whose main purpose is to navigate through the document are not listed here, because navigation can be achieved more easily using XPath expressions.
| Name | Type | Description |
| baseName | String | The local name of the node, excluding any namespace prefix. |
| namespaceURI | String | The namespace URI. |
| nodeName | String | The name of the node, including its namespace prefix if any. Note that unlike the XPath model, unnamed nodes are given conventional names such as “#document” , “#text” , and “#comment” . |
| nodeTypeString | String | Returns the type of node in string form. For example, “element” , “attribute” , or “comment” . |
| nodeValue | Variant | The value stored in the node. This is not the same as the XPath string value; for elements, it is always null. |
| prefix | String | The prefix for the namespace applying to the node. |
| text | String | Text contained by this node (like the XPath string value). |
| xml | String | XML representation of the node and its descendants. |
IXMLDOMNodeList
This object represents a list of nodes. For our present purposes, we are interested in this object because it is the result of the
selectNodes()
method.
An
IXMLDOMNodeList
is returned as a result of the
selectNodes()
method: it contains the list of nodes selected by the supplied XPath expression. You can process all the nodes in the list either by using the
nextNode()
method or by direct indexing using the
item
property.
Methods
| Name | Returns | Description |
| item | IXMLDOMNode | item(N) gets the node at position N. |
| nextNode | IXMLDOMNode | Gets the next node. |
| reset | (Nothing) | Resets the current position. |
Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
| length | Long | Identifies the number of nodes in the collection. |
IXMLDOMParseError
This object is accessible through the
parseError
property of the
IXMLDOMDocument
interface.
Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
| errorCode | Long | The error code. |
| filepos | Long | The character position of the error within the XML document. |
| line | Long | The line number of the error. |
| linepos | Long | The character position in the line containing the error. |
| reason | String | Explanation of the error. |
| srcText | String | The XML text in error. |
| url | String | The URL of the offending document. |
IXMLDOMSelection
This object represents a selection of nodes. It is returned as the result of the
selectNodes()
method when the target document implements the
IXMLDOMDocument2
interface.
It's simplest to think of this object as a stored expression that returns a list of nodes on demand. It's rather like a relational view: You don't need to know whether the results are actually stored, or whether they are obtained as required.
This interface extends the
IXMLDOMNodeList
interface.
Methods
| Name | Returns | Description |
| clone | IXMLDOMSelection | Produces a copy of this IXMLDOMSelection . |
| getProperty | String | Returns the value of a named property such as SelectionLanguage . |
| item | IXMLDOMNode | item(N) gets the node at position N. |
| matches | IXMLDOMNode | Tests whether the given node is a member of the set of nodes (returns null if no match; otherwise, the node from which the selection succeeds). |
| nextNode | IXMLDOMNode | Gets the next node. |
| reset | (Nothing) | Resets the current position. |
Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
| context | IXMLDOMNode | Establishes the context node for evaluating the expression. Changing the context node implicitly resets the current list of nodes, replacing it with a new list. |
| expr | String | The XPath expression that determines the nodes selected. This can be changed at any time; doing so implicitly resets the current list of nodes, replacing it with a new list. |
| length | Long | Identifies the number of nodes in the collection. |
IXSLProcessor
An
IXSLProcessor
object represents a single execution of a stylesheet to transform a source document.
The object is normally created by calling the
createProcessor()
method of an
IXSLTemplate
object.
The transformation is achieved by calling the
transform()
method.
Methods
| Name | Returns | Description |
| addParameter | (Nothing) | Sets the value of a stylesheet parameter. The first argument is the local name of the parameter, the second is the parameter value, and the third is the namespace URI (usually “”). The value can be a boolean, a number, or a string, or a Node or NodeList . |
| reset | (Nothing) | Resets the state of the processor and aborts the current transform. |
| setStartMode | (Nothing) | Sets the initial mode. There are two arguments, representing the local name and the namespace URI parts of the mode name. |
| transform | Boolean | Applies the stylesheet (from which this XSLProcessor was derived) to the source document identified in the input property. The result tree is accessible through the output property. If the source document is being loaded asynchronously, a return value of False means that the transformation needs to wait until more input is available. It can be resumed by calling transform() again later. The current state of the transformation can be determined from the readyState property. |
Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
| input | Variant | XML source document to transform. This is normally supplied as a DOM Document , but it may also be a Node . The input can also be supplied as an IStream . |
| output | Variant | Output of the transformation. If you don't supply an output object, the processor will create a String to hold the output, which you can read using this property. If you prefer, you can supply an object such as a DOM Document , a DOM Node , or an IStream to receive the output. |
| ownerTemplate | IXSLTemplate | The XSLTemplate object used to create this processor object. |
| readyState | Long | The current state of the transformation. This will be READYSTATE_COMPLETE (3) when the transformation is finished. |
| startMode | String | Name of the initial mode. See setStartMode() method above. |
| startModeURI | String | Namespace of the initial mode. See setStartMode() method above. |
| stylesheet | IXMLDOMNode | The current stylesheet being used. |
IXSLTemplate
An
IXSLTemplate
object represents a compiled stylesheet in memory. If you want to use the same stylesheet more than once, then creating an
IXSLTemplate
and using it repeatedly is more efficient than using the raw stylesheet repeatedly using
transformNode()
.
Methods
| Name | Returns | Description |
| createProcessor | IXSLProcessor | Creates an IXSLProcessor object. This method should only be called after the stylesheet property has been set to associate the IXSLTemplate object with a stylesheet. It creates an IXSLProcessor object, which can then be used to initiate a transformation of a given source document. |
Properties
| Name | Type | Description |
| stylesheet | IXMLDOMNode | Identifies the stylesheet from which this IXSLTemplate is derived. |
Setting this property causes the specified stylesheet to be compiled; this
IXSLTemplate
object is the reusable representation of the compiled stylesheet.
The DOM
Node
representing the stylesheet will normally be a DOM
Document
object, but it may be an Element representing an embedded stylesheet.
