Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | X | XML Journal

Searching XML files with XSLT: how more advanced XSLT techniques can be used. (XSLT Tips).

Article Excerpt
XSLT is generally used to parse and translate XML files, but with some more advanced techniques, it's possible to search for specific attributes (or elements) of any XML document or list of documents.

While developing a search tool, I learned how to replace strings and translate characters (uppercase to lowercase) in XSL. After a little research, it took only a few hours to put together what I needed. The examples in this article show how to implement a simple search mechanism to search a DocBook file and display the search results in HTML format.

When XML first appeared, much of the hype was about how well suited it is for searching documents (and it is--but I haven't seen many implementations). I'd been working on a Web site and wanted to add a search box. Using XML, searching the site should be easy enough. The site itself is in one DocBook XML document. Articles (posts) can be posted to the Web site as well. These are each stored in a separate DocBook Article XML file. Yet another XML file on the server contains a list of these article files, which more or less functions as an index for the directory.

More specifically, the requirements I came up with were:

1. Allow the user to enter a keyword into a text box.

2. Choose to search for any keyword, just author names, or just titles.

3. Scan the Web site content or scan the articles.

4. Display the results, showing text around the found keyword and...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!